| 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: respect, which, with her, was the utmost extent of her concessions.
Her manner was doubtless the same with the King of France and the
royal princes. She seemed happy to see this great man, and glad that
she had sought him. Persons of taste, like the princess, are
especially distinguished for their manner of listening, for an
affability without superciliousness, which is to politeness what
practice is to virtue. When the celebrated man spoke, she took an
attentive attitude, a thousand times more flattering than the best-
seasoned compliments. The mutual presentation was made quietly,
without emphasis, and in perfectly good taste, by the marquise.
At dinner d'Arthez was placed beside the princess, who, far from
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: home farm. Tall and thin, with big, thoroughbred eyes, and long,
straight hair, like a witch, turning gray, she was rather
terrifying, but more than anything else she was queer.
Once upon a time long ago she had been housemaid to my
great-grandmother, Countess Pelagéya Nikoláyevna
Tolstoy, my father's grandmother, née Princess
Gortchakóva. She was fond of telling about her young
days. She would say:
I was very handsome. When there were gentlefolks visiting
at the big house, the countess would call me, 'Gachette
[Agáfya], femme de chambre, apportez-moi un mouchoir!'
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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 A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: reasons, and affectionate reasons for all these illogicalities.
Children do not want to be treated altogether as adults: such
treatment terrifies them and over-burdens them with responsibility.
In truth, very few adults care to be called on for independence and
originality: they also are bewildered and terrified in the absence of
precedents and precepts and commandments; but modern Democracy allows
them a sanctioning and cancelling power if they are capable of using
it, which children are not. To treat a child wholly as an adult would
be to mock and destroy it. Infantile docility and juvenile dependence
are, like death, a product of Natural Selection; and though there is
no viler crime than to abuse them, yet there is no greater cruelty
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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 The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: I judge the best, whate'er befall,
Is still to sit on one's behind,
And, having duly moistened all,
Smoke with an unperturbed mind.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
[HOTEL BELVEDERE], DAVOS, DECEMBER 12 [1880].
MY DEAR FATHER, - Here is the scheme as well as I can foresee. I
begin the book immediately after the '15, as then began the attempt
to suppress the Highlands.
I. THIRTY YEARS' INTERVAL
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