The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: "I am, very respectfully yours,
"SAMUEL MAY, JUN."
Our old masters, having heard how their agents
were treated at Boston, wrote to Mr. Filmore, who
was then President of the States, to know what
he could do to have us sent back to slavery. Mr.
Filmore said that we should be returned. He gave
instructions for military force to be sent to Boston
to assist the officers in making the arrest. There-
fore we, as well as our friends (among whom was
George Thompson, Esq., late M.P. for the Tower
 Running a Thousand Miles for 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 Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: appear to the world about them as the most enigmatic side of
their natures and perhaps must remain for ever obscure even to
themselves, will be their unconscious response to the still voice
of that inexorable past from which his work of fiction and their
personalities are remotely derived.
Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and
undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme
master of art as of life. An imaginative and exact rendering of
authentic memories may serve worthily that spirit of piety
towards all things human which sanctions the conceptions of a
writer of tales, and the emotions of the man reviewing his own
 Some Reminiscences |