| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: eccentric, is not known to have been an immoral man. We rather
doubt his identity with the priest of Merry Mount.
And with his keen sword Endicott assaulted the hallowed Maypole.
Nor long did it resist his arm. It groaned with a dismal sound;
it showered leaves and rosebuds upon the remorseless enthusiast;
and finally, with all its green boughs and ribbons and flowers,
symbolic of departed pleasures, down fell the banner staff of
Merry Mount. As it sank, tradition says, the evening sky grew
darker, and the woods threw forth a more sombre shadow
"There," cried Endicott, looking triumphantly on his work, "there
lies the only Maypole in New England! The thought is strong
Twice Told Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: made a very shining success out of their attempts on the
simpleton from "old Shelby." Experimenters grew scarce
and chary. Now the young doctor came to the rescue.
There was delight and applause when he proposed to scare
Nicodemus to death, and explained how he was going to do it.
He had a noble new skeleton--the skeleton of the late
and only local celebrity, Jimmy Finn, the village
drunkard--a grisly piece of property which he had bought
of Jimmy Finn himself, at auction, for fifty dollars,
under great competition, when Jimmy lay very sick in
the tan-yard a fortnight before his death. The fifty
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: that lay in its harbour, painted like toys and with pots of flowers
and cages of song-birds in the cabin windows, and for one
particular Dutch skipper who would sit all day in slippers on the
break of the poop, smoking a long German pipe; Wemyss (pronounce
Weems) with its bat-haunted caves, where the Chevalier Johnstone,
on his flight from Culloden, passed a night of superstitious
terrors; Leven, a bald, quite modern place, sacred to summer
visitors, whence there has gone but yesterday the tall figure and
the white locks of the last Englishman in Delhi, my uncle Dr.
Balfour, who was still walking his hospital rounds, while the
troopers from Meerut clattered and cried "Deen Deen" along the
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: obvious. While the French attributed the result to celestial
interposition in their behalf, the English, equally ready to
admit its supernatural character, considered the powers of hell
rather than those of heaven to have been the prime instigators.
In their eyes Jeanne was a witch, and it was at least their cue
to exhibit her as such. They might have put her to death when she
first reached Rouen. Some persons, indeed, went so far as to
advise that she should be sewed up in a sack and thrown at once
into the Seine; but this was not what the authorities wanted. The
whole elaborate trial, and the extorted recantation, were devised
for the purpose of demonstrating her to be a witch, and thus
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
