| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: Antinous, poor as Job, who was expected to obtain great successes, and
for whom his mother desired, above all things, to find a rich wife.
Perhaps this hope was the secret of the intimacy she still kept up
with the marquise, in whose salon, which was one of the first in
Paris, she might eventually be able to choose among many heiresses for
Georges' wife. The princess saw five years between the present moment
and her son's marriage,--five solitary and desolate years; for, in
order to obtain such a marriage for her son, she knew that her own
conduct must be marked in the corner with discretion.
The princess lived in the rue de Miromesnil, in a small house, of
which she occupied the ground-floor at a moderate rent. There she made
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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 Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: of being infected again. This revived that notion that the infection
was all in the air, that there was no such thing as contagion from the
sick people to the sound; and so strongly did this whimsy prevail
among people that they ran all together promiscuously, sick and well.
Not the Mahometans, who, prepossessed with the principle of
predestination, value nothing of contagion, let it be in what it will,
could be more obstinate than the people of London; they that were
perfectly sound, and came out of the wholesome air, as we call it, into
the city, made nothing of going into the same houses and chambers,
nay, even into the same beds, with those that had the distemper upon
them, and were not recovered.
A Journal of the Plague Year |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: gentlemen.
As to our City of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this
purpose, in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may
be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend
buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife,
as we do roasting pigs.
A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose
virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased, in discoursing on
this matter, to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said, that
many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their
deer, he conceived that the want of venison might be well
A Modest Proposal |
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 Astoria by Washington Irving: the friends of that gentleman to see him thus wantonly casting
himself loose upon savage life. How he and his comrades fared in
the wilderness, and how the Snakes acquitted themselves of their
trust respecting the horses, will hereafter appear in the course
of these rambling anecdotes.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Scanty Fare.- A Mendicant Snake.- Embarkation on Henry River- Joy
of the Voyageurs.-Arrival at Snake River.- Rapids and Breakers. -
Beginning of Misfortunes.- Snake Encampments.- Parley With a
Savage.- A Second Disaster. - Loss of a Boatman.- The Caldron
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