| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: live now to eighty-five. You, too, Kahn! There are endless years
yet for you--and all full of learning.... We carry an excessive
burden of sex and sexual tradition still, and we have to free
ourselves from it. We do free ourselves from it. We have learnt
in a thousand different ways to hold back death, and this sex,
which in the old barbaric days was just sufficient to balance our
dying, is now like a hammer that has lost its anvil, it plunges
through human life. You poets, you young people want to turn it
to delight. Turn it to delight. That may be one way out. In a
little while, if you have any brains worth thinking about, you
will be satisfied, and then you will come up here to the greater
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Blakeley was wrecked, or robbed, or whatever it was, with a button
missing and a hole in one sock, she'll retire to the Old Ladies'
Home. I've heard her threaten it."
Mr. Hotchkiss was without a sense of humor. He regarded McKnight
gravely and went on:
"I've been up in the room where the man lay while he was unable to
get away, and there is nothing there. But I found what may be a
possible clue in the dust heap.
"Mrs. Carter tells me that in unpacking his grip the other day she
took out of the coat of the pajamas some pieces of a telegram. As
I figure it, the pajamas were his own. He probably had them on when
The Man in Lower Ten |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: hear the rustle of her skirt, after longing for a whole morning
to be near her, after starting up a hundred time--"I will go down
now"--and not to have gone; this was to him life so rich that
such sensations, too greatly prolonged, would have worn out his
spirit. The heart has the singular power of giving extraordinary
value to mere nothings. What joy it is to a traveler to treasure
a blade of grass, an unfamiliar leaf, if he has risked his life
to pluck it! It is the same with the trifles of love.
The old lady was not in the drawing-room. When the young girl
found herself there, alone with the painter, she brought a chair
to stand on, to take down the picture; but perceiving that she
|
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 Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: of the State. This man, sublime after the manner of that nameless
soldier who died in saving Napoleon by a "qui vive," lived at the
ministry.
In ten minutes Jules was in his friend's office. Jacquet gave him a
chair, laid aside methodically his green silk eye-shade, rubbed his
hands, picked up his snuff-box, rose, stretched himself till his
shoulder-blades cracked, swelled out his chest, and said:--
"What brings you here, Monsieur Desmarets? What do you want with me?"
"Jacquet, I want you to decipher a secret,--a secret of life and
death."
"It doesn't concern politics?"
Ferragus |
