| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: reason of this reticence? If it is familiar to many military men who
may chance to be in a like predicament, it is perhaps worth while to
give the story.
Your genuine trooper (if it is allowable here to employ the word which
in the army signifies a man who is destined to die as a captain) is a
sort of serf, a part and parcel of his regiment, an essentially simple
creature, and Castanier was marked out by nature as a victim to the
wiles of mothers with grown-up daughters left too long on their hands.
It was at Nancy, during one of those brief intervals of repose when
the Imperial armies were not on active service abroad, that Castanier
was so unlucky as to pay some attention to a young lady with whom he
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: and now green as emerald under gray clouds, sleep encircled by
mighty precipices. Could anything be a greater contrast with
Venice? There the canals alive with gondolas, and the open harbour
bright with many-coloured sails; here, the hidden lake, silent and
lifeless, save when
"A leaping fish
Sends through the tarn a lonely cheer."
Tired, and a little foot-sore, after nine hours' walking, I came
into the big railway hotel at Toblach that night. There I met my
friends again, and parted from them and the Dolomites the next day,
with regret. For they were "stepping westward;" but in order to
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