| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: be deterred from improving his possessions for fear lest they be taken
away from him or another from opening up trade for fear of taxes; but
the prince ought to offer rewards to whoever wishes to do these things
and designs in any way to honour his city or state.
Further, he ought to entertain the people with festivals and
spectacles at convenient seasons of the year; and as every city is
divided into guilds or into societies,[*] he ought to hold such bodies
in esteem, and associate with them sometimes, and show himself an
example of courtesy and liberality; nevertheless, always maintaining
the majesty of his rank, for this he must never consent to abate in
anything.
The Prince |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: which he had just emerged, but the frightful men
anticipated his intentions. They blocked the way;
they seized him, and though he fell, groveling upon his
knees before them, begging for his life, they bound him
and hurled him to the floor of the inner temple.
The rest was but a repetition of what Tarzan and Jane
Clayton had passed through. The priestesses came,
and with them La, the High Priestess. Werper was raised
and laid across the altar. Cold sweat exuded from his
every pore as La raised the cruel, sacrificial knife
above him. The death chant fell upon his tortured
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: out of amused curiosity about my industries; but she explained that
there was no tansy in the neighborhood with such snap to it as some
that grew about the schoolhouse lot. Being scuffed down all the
spring made it grow so much the better, like some folks that had it
hard in their youth, and were bound to make the most of themselves
before they died.
IV
At the Schoolhouse Window
ONE DAY I reached the schoolhouse very late, owing to attendance
upon the funeral of an acquaintance and neighbor, with whose sad
decline in health I had been familiar, and whose last days both the
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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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: island. I have no trusty proof of it: but I can believe it
possible; for every cause of drunkenness seems on the increase.
Overwork of body and mind; circumstances which depress health;
temptation to drink, and drink again, at every corner of the
streets; and finally, money, and ever more money, in the hands of
uneducated people, who have not the desire, and too often not the
means, of spending it in any save the lowest pleasures. These, it
seems to me, are the true causes of drunkenness, increasing or
not. And if we wish to become a more temperate nation, we must
lessen them, if we cannot eradicate them.
First, overwork. We all live too fast, and work too hard. "All
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