| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: moments when a passing cloud, the sun glinting on the purple
thistles, a kindly smile, a child's face, will rouse him to a
passion of pain,--when his nature starts up with a mad cry of
rage against God, man, whoever it is that has forced this vile,
slimy life upon him. With all this groping, this mad desire, a
great blind intellect stumbling through wrong, a loving poet's
heart, the man was by habit only a coarse, vulgar laborer,
familiar with sights and words you would blush to name. Be
just: when I tell you about this night, see him as he is. Be
just,--not like man's law, which seizes on one isolated fact,
but like God's judging angel, whose clear, sad eye saw all the
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: I was to pass through Delaware--another slave State, where slave-catchers
generally awaited their prey, for it was not in the interior of the State,
but on its borders, that these human hounds were most vigilant and active.
The border lines between slavery and freedom were the dangerous ones
for the fugitives. The heart of no fox or deer, with hungry hounds
on his trail in full chase, could have beaten more anxiously or noisily
than did mine from the time I left Baltimore till I reached Philadelphia.
The passage of the Susquehanna River at Havre de Grace was at that time
made by ferry-boat, on board of which I met a young colored man by the name
of Nichols, who came very near betraying me. He was a "hand" on the boat,
but, instead of minding his business, he insisted upon knowing me,
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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 The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: "How Providence provides for all His creatures!"
"His care," the gnat said, "even the insects follows:
For us He has provided wrens and swallows."
Sempen Railey
INSURANCE, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player
is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating
the man who keeps the table.
INSURANCE AGENT: My dear sir, that is a fine house -- pray let me
insure it.
HOUSE OWNER: With pleasure. Please make the annual premium so
low that by the time when, according to the tables of your
The Devil's Dictionary |
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 Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: recollections of canoeing on the high seas, and the map
itself, with its infinite, eloquent suggestion, made up the
whole of my materials. It is, perhaps, not often that a map
figures so largely in a tale, yet it is always important.
The author must know his countryside, whether real or
imaginary, like his hand; the distances, the points of the
compass, the place of the sun's rising, the behaviour of the
moon, should all be beyond cavil. And how troublesome the
moon is! I have come to grief over the moon in PRINCE OTTO,
and so soon as that was pointed out to me, adopted a
precaution which I recommend to other men - I never write now
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