| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: "Croizeau spoke with a coach-builder's admiration of the sumptuous
furniture provided by the amorous Denisart as a setting for his fair
one, describing it all in detail with diabolical complacency for
Antonia's benefit," continued Desroches. "The ebony chests inlaid with
mother-of-pearl and gold wire, the Brussels carpets, a mediaeval
bedstead worth three thousand francs, a Boule clock, candelabra in the
four corners of the dining-room, silk curtains, on which Chinese
patience had wrought pictures of birds, and hangings over the doors,
worth more than the portress that opened them.
" 'And that is what /you/ ought to have, my pretty lady.--And that is
what I should like to offer you,' he would conclude. 'I am quite aware
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: that this meant: 'No, I am not angry.'
'You said . . .' He hesitated. It seemed too bold to say. 'You
said that you began to love me. I believe it--but there is
something that troubles you and checks your feeling. What is
it?'
'Yes--now or never!' thought she. 'He is bound to know of it
anyway. But now he will not forsake me. Ah, if he should, it
would be terrible!' And she threw a loving glance at his tall,
noble, powerful figure. She loved him now more than she had
loved the Tsar, and apart from the Imperial dignity would not
have preferred the Emperor to him.
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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 Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: to see the river again, and the steamboats, and such of
the boys as might be left; so I resolved to go out there.
I enlisted a poet for company, and a stenographer to 'take him down,'
and started westward about the middle of April.
As I proposed to make notes, with a view to printing,
I took some thought as to methods of procedure.
I reflected that if I were recognized, on the river, I should
not be as free to go and come, talk, inquire, and spy around,
as I should be if unknown; I remembered that it was the custom
of steamboatmen in the old times to load up the confiding
stranger with the most picturesque and admirable lies, and put
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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 Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: laughter; and I was glad to get my bundle on my staff's end and
set out over the ford and up the hill upon the farther side;
till, just as I came on the green drove-road running wide through
the heather, I took my last look of Kirk Essendean, the trees
about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard where my
father and my mother lay.
CHAPTER II
I COME TO MY JOURNEY'S END
On the forenoon of the second day, coming to the top of a hill, I
saw all the country fall away before me down to the sea; and in
the midst of this descent, on a long ridge, the city of Edinburgh
Kidnapped |
