| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: playing with me in the hall of our villa a child fairer than pictured cherub
--a creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and
motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills. The apparition
was soon explained. With his permission my mother prevailed on her
rustic guardians to yield their charge to her. They were fond of
the sweet orphan. Her presence had seemed a blessing to them, but
it would be unfair to her to keep her in poverty and want when Providence
afforded her such powerful protection. They consulted their village priest,
and the result was that Elizabeth Lavenza became the inmate of my parents'
house--my more than sister--the beautiful and adored companion of all
my occupations and my pleasures.
Frankenstein |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: gave back these same shifting blues and uncertain yellows.
The fourth side of the apartment was broken in outline
at one end by the door through which they had entered,
and at the other by a broad, square opening,
hung with looped-back curtains of a thin silken stuff.
Between the two apertures rose against the wall what
Theron took at first glance to be an altar. There were
pyramidal rows of tall candles here on either side,
each masked with a little silken hood; below, in the centre,
a shelf-like projection supported what seemed a massive,
carved casket, and in the beautiful intricacies of this,
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: That was a sad day for me, a sad day for little Tommy, and a sad
day for my dear Baltimore mistress and teacher, when I left for
the Eastern Shore, to be valued and divided. We, all three, wept
bitterly that day; for we might be parting, and we feared we were
parting, forever. No one could tell among which pile of chattels
I should be flung. Thus early, I got a foretaste of that painful
uncertainty which slavery brings to the ordinary lot of mortals.
Sickness, adversity and death may interfere with the plans and
purposes of all; but the slave has the added danger of changing
homes, changing hands, and of having separations unknown to other
men. Then, too, there was the intensified degradation of the
My Bondage and My Freedom |
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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: tons, was finally covered with hay and boards; and though it was
unroofed the following July, and a part of it carried off, the rest
remaining exposed to the sun, it stood over that summer and the next
winter, and was not quite melted till September, 1848. Thus the
pond recovered the greater part.
Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green
tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell
it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of
some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great
cakes slips from the ice-man's sled into the village street, and
lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to
Walden |
