| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: servant had been taken sick, and the family had either time to send
him out or retire from the house and leave the sick person, as I have
said above, they had all been preserved; whereas when, upon one or
more sickening in a family, the house has been shut up, the whole
family have perished, and the bearers been obliged to go in to fetch
out the dead bodies, not being able to bring them to the door, and at
last none left to do it.
(3) This put it out of question to me, that the calamity was spread by
infection; that is to say, by some certain steams or fumes, which the
physicians call effluvia, by the breath, or by the sweat, or by the
stench of the sores of the sick persons, or some other way, perhaps,
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: "In future," she said, "you will listen to your mother, and will
follow her advice; for a mother can give nothing but good counsel to
her child. We will go and see your uncle Cardot; that is our last
hope. Cardot owed a great deal to your father, who gave him his
sister, Mademoiselle Husson, with an enormous dowry for those days,
which enabled him to make a large fortune in the silk trade. I think
he might, perhaps, place you with Monsieur Camusot, his successor and
son-in-law, in the rue des Bourdonnais. But, you see, your uncle
Cardot has four children. He gave his establishment, the Cocon d'Or,
to his eldest daughter, Madame Camusot; and though Camusot has
millions, he has also four children by two wives; and, besides, he
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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 The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: long."
They felt a peculiar bump; a vision of brick pillars lingered
before the rattling windows of the cab; a sudden cessation of
atrocious jolting and uproarious jingling dazed the two women.
What had happened? They sat motionless and scared in the profound
stillness, till the door came open, and a rough, strained
whispering was heard:
"Here you are!"
A range of gabled little houses, each with one dim yellow window,
on the ground floor, surrounded the dark open space of a grass plot
planted with shrubs and railed off from the patchwork of lights and
The Secret Agent |
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 First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: There is no other alternative; for continuing the government is
acquiescence on one side or the other.
If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce,
they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them;
for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever
a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority.
For instance, why may not any portion of a new
confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again,
precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it?
All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the
exact temper of doing this.
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