| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Foolish Virgin by Thomas Dixon: Dollar!"
He paused and leaned close, persuasively:
"Suppose now, the man that got that money had to
kill a fool to take it--what of it? You don't get big
money any other way. A burglar watches his chance,
takes his life in his hands and drills his way into a
house. He finds a fool there who fights. It's not his
fault that the man was born a fool, now is it?"
"Mebbe not----"
"Of course not. A burglar kills but one to get his
pile, and then only because he must, in self-defence.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: laying down a road is a momentous political question, where the
State has no army to pay and no wars to carry on, and where much
wealth and much honor cannot be bestowed upon the chief citizens,
no form of government can be more natural or more appropriate
than that of a republic. But it is this same republican spirit,
it is these manners and customs of a free people, which are
engendered and nurtured in the different States, to be afterwards
applied to the country at large. The public spirit of the Union
is, so to speak, nothing more than an abstract of the patriotic
zeal of the provinces. Every citizen of the United States
transfuses his attachment to his little republic in the common
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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 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: Though you do not know him so well as me, Miss Dashwood,
you must have seen enough of him to be sensible he is
very capable of making a woman sincerely attached to him."
"Certainly," answered Elinor, without knowing what
she said; but after a moment's reflection, she added,
with revived security of Edward's honour and love,
and her companion's falsehood--"Engaged to Mr. Edward
Ferrars!--I confess myself so totally surprised at
what you tell me, that really--I beg your pardon;
but surely there must be some mistake of person or name.
We cannot mean the same Mr. Ferrars."
Sense and Sensibility |
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 Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: I want you to look back, as he does every day, at his birth in
vice, his starved infancy; to remember the heavy years he has
groped through as boy and man,--the slow, heavy years of
constant, hot work. So long ago he began, that he thinks
sometimes he has worked there for ages. There is no hope that
it will ever end. Think that God put into this man's soul a
fierce thirst for beauty,--to know it, to create it; to
be--something, he knows not what,--other than he is. There are
moments when a passing cloud, the sun glinting on the purple
thistles, a kindly smile, a child's face, will rouse him to a
passion of pain,--when his nature starts up with a mad cry of
Life in the Iron-Mills |
