| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: While becoming a lawyer, Lincoln still remained a politician. In
those early days in the West, the two occupations went hand in
hand, almost of necessity. Laws had to be newly made to fit the
needs of the new settlements, and therefore a large proportion of
lawyers was sent to the State legislature. In the summer these
same lawyers went about the State, practising before the circuit
courts, Illinois being divided into what were called judicial
circuits, each taking in several counties, and sometimes covering
territory more than a hundred miles square. Springfield and the
neighboring towns were in the eighth judicial circuit. Twice a
year the circuit judge traveled from one county-seat to another,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: wish your Pa was home."
I don't know just what Pa could do if he were
home, he seems so frail,
But every time the skies grow black I notice Ma
gets rather pale.
An' when she's called us children in, an' locked
the windows an' the doors,
She jumps at every lightnin' flash an' trembles
when the thunder roars.
An' when the baby starts to cry, she wrings her
hands an' says: "Oh, dear,
A Heap O' Livin' |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: thy painful travail, and of the shrines thou hast
visited.''
The Palmer received the boon with another low
reverence, and followed Edwina out of the apartment.
In the anteroom he found his attendant Anwold,
who, taking the torch from the hand of the waiting-maid,
conducted him with more haste than ceremony
to an exterior and ignoble part of the building,
where a number of small apartments, or rather
cells, served for sleeping places to the lower order
of domestics, and to strangers of mean degree.
Ivanhoe |
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 Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: parish church, the steeple of which could be seen at the summit of the
hill, whither she was always accompanied by her grandmother, her
nurse, and her father's valet. She had reached the age of seventeen in
that sweet ignorance which the rarity of books allowed a girl to
retain without appearing extraordinary at a period when educated women
were thought phenomenal. The house had been to her a convent, but with
more freedom, less enforced prayer,--a retreat where she had lived
beneath the eye of a pious old woman and the protection of her father,
the only man she had ever known. This absolute solitude, necessitated
from her birth by the apparent feebleness of her constitution, had
been carefully maintained by Beauvouloir.
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