| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: into slavery, the crime of freedom being unpardon-
able. The Missouri Senate has before it a bill
providing that all free negroes above the age of
eighteen years who shall be found in the State after
September, 1860, shall be sold into slavery; and
that all such negroes as shall enter the State after
September, 1861, and remain there twenty-four
hours, shall also be sold into slavery for ever. Mis-
sissippi, Kentucky, and Georgia, and in fact, I be-
lieve, all the slave States, are legislating in the same
manner. Thus the slaveholders make it almost im-
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: Timber and underwood roots and tops;
With power to preserve the forest,
And watch it against deer-stealers and others:
With a right to keep hounds of all sorts,
Four greyhounds and six terriers,
Harriers and foxhounds, and other hounds.
And to this end I have registered this my grant in the crown rolls
or books;
To which the bishop has set his hand as a witness for any one to
read.
Also signed by the king's brother (or, as some think, the
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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 Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: by doing it. But I liked you once, and for the sake of that time
I try to tell you how mistaken you are!" Much of her confusion
resulted from her wonder and alarm at finding herself in a sense
dominated mentally and emotionally by this simple school-girl. "I
do not love him," she went on, with desperate untruth. "It was a
kindness--my making somewhat more of him than one usually does of
one's doctor. I was lonely; I talked--well, I trifled with him.
I am very sorry if such child's playing out of pure friendship has
been a serious matter to you. Who could have expected it? But the
world is so simple here."
"Oh, that's affectation," said Grace, shaking her head. "It is no
The Woodlanders |
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 Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: come to one of those moments of extremity when a man says, 'I
will enlist.' I had one hope. I expected from my home a box full
of linen, a present from one of those old aunts who, knowing
nothing of Paris, think of your shirts, while they imagine that
their nephew with thirty francs a month is eating ortolans. The
box arrived while I was at the schools; it had cost forty francs
for carriage. The porter, a German shoemaker living in a loft,
had paid the money and kept the box. I walked up and down the Rue
des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres and the Rue de l'Ecole de
Medecine without hitting on any scheme which would release my
trunk without the payment of the forty francs, which of course I
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