| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: all charitable ladies and that of the members of the Maternity Society
in particular; she foresaw a dozen visits which would occupy her whole
day, and brew up a frightful storm on the head of the guilty du
Bousquier. The Chevalier de Valois, while foreseeing the turn the
affair would take, had really no idea of the scandal which would
result from his own action.
"My dear child," said Madame Granson to her son, "we are to dine, you
know, with Mademoiselle Cormon; do take a little pains with your
appearance. You are wrong to neglect your dress as you do. Put on that
handsome frilled shirt and your green coat of Elbeuf cloth. I have my
reasons," she added slyly. "Besides, Mademoiselle Cormon is going to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: "Yes," replied the Raccoon, "and I hear quite a number of tales on
your ring."
The Alderman, being of a sensitive, retiring disposition, shrank
from further comparison, and, strolling to another part of the
garden, stole the camel.
The Flying-Machine
AN Ingenious Man who had built a flying-machine invited a great
concourse of people to see it go up. At the appointed moment,
everything being ready, he boarded the car and turned on the power.
The machine immediately broke through the massive substructure upon
which it was builded, and sank out of sight into the earth, the
Fantastic Fables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: That poet whose name carries with it a certain presumption of
infallibility has told us that "the proper study of mankind is man;"
and if material advancement in consequence be any criterion of the
fitness of a particular mental pursuit, events have assuredly
justified the saying. Indeed, the Levant has helped antithetically
to preach the same lesson, in showing us by its own fatal example
that the improper study of mankind is woman, and that they who but
follow the fair will inevitably degenerate.
The Far Oriental knows nothing of either study, and cares less.
The delight of self-exploration, or the possibly even greater delight
of losing one's self in trying to fathom femininity, is a sensation
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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 Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: law of society, there is so much to say about it that it hardly can
be touched incidentally. The more we study the question, the
more we are brought to the conclusion that society itself is
responsible for the anti-social deeds perpetrated in its midst, and
that no punishment, no prisons, and no hangmen can diminish
the numbers of such deeds; nothing short of a reorganization of
society itself. Three-quarters of all the acts which are brought
every year before our courts have their origin, either directly or
indirectly, in the present disorganized state of society with
regard to the production and distribution of wealth--not in the
perversity of human nature. As to the relatively few anti-social
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