| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: "But, Mary, you know how we have been trained all our lives long,
like the whole village, till it is absolutely second nature to us to
stop not a single moment to think when there's an honest thing to be
done--"
"Oh, I know it, I know it--it's been one everlasting training and
training and training in honesty--honesty shielded, from the very
cradle, against every possible temptation, and so it's ARTIFICIAL
honesty, and weak as water when temptation comes, as we have seen
this night. God knows I never had shade nor shadow of a doubt of my
petrified and indestructible honesty until now--and now, under the
very first big and real temptation, I--Edward, it is my belief that
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Fringes his blushing cheeks, and his young limbs are strong and
brown;
And he is rich, and fat and fleecy herds
Of bleating sheep upon his meadows lie,
And many an earthen bowl of yellow curds
Is in his homestead for the thievish fly
To swim and drown in, the pink clover mead
Keeps its sweet store for him, and he can pipe on oaten reed.
And yet I love him not; it was for thee
I kept my love; I knew that thou would'st come
To rid me of this pallid chastity,
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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 Glasses by Henry James: warn him in person against taking action, so to call it, on the
horrid certitude which I could see he carried away with him. I had
added somehow to that certitude. He told me what you had told him
you had seen in your shop."
Mrs. Meldrum, I perceived, had come to Welbeck Street on an errand
identical with my own--a circumstance indicating her rare sagacity,
inasmuch as her ground for undertaking it was a very different
thing from what Flora's wonderful visit had made of mine. I
remarked to her that what I had seen in the shop was sufficiently
striking, but that I had seen a great deal more that morning in my
studio. "In short," I said, "I've seen everything."
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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 On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted
from his position, and despairs of his country, when his
country has more reasons to despair of him. He forthwith
adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only
available one, thus proving that he is himself available for
any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth
than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native,
who may have been bought. O for a man who is a man, and,
and my neighbor says, has a bone is his back which you
cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault:
the population has been returned too large. How many men
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
