| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: glanced up at the empty window-frame.
At this moment a slender white hand threw up the lower half of one of
the clumsy windows on the third floor by the aid of the sash runners,
of which the pulley so often suddenly gives way and releases the heavy
panes it ought to hold up. The watcher was then rewarded for his long
waiting. The face of a young girl appeared, as fresh as one of the
white cups that bloom on the bosom of the waters, crowned by a frill
of tumbled muslin, which gave her head a look of exquisite innocence.
Though wrapped in brown stuff, her neck and shoulders gleamed here and
there through little openings left by her movements in sleep. No
expression of embarrassment detracted from the candor of her face, or
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: "Oh, yes," said De Witt, "you mean to speak of the people
down below, don't you?"
"Do you hear them?"
"They are indeed in a state of great excitement; but when
they see us perhaps they will grow calmer, as we have never
done them anything but good."
"That's unfortunately no reason, except for the contrary,"
muttered the girl, as, on an imperative sign from her
father, she withdrew.
"Indeed, child, what you say is only too true."
Then, in pursuing his way, he said to himself, --
The Black Tulip |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: lyre, or cuts and rends the strings, then he who takes this view would
argue as you do, and on the same analogy, that the harmony survives and has
not perished--you cannot imagine, he would say, that the lyre without the
strings, and the broken strings themselves which are mortal remain, and yet
that the harmony, which is of heavenly and immortal nature and kindred, has
perished--perished before the mortal. The harmony must still be somewhere,
and the wood and strings will decay before anything can happen to that.
The thought, Socrates, must have occurred to your own mind that such is our
conception of the soul; and that when the body is in a manner strung and
held together by the elements of hot and cold, wet and dry, then the soul
is the harmony or due proportionate admixture of them. But if so, whenever
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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 When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: sun."
"Yes, Yva, but if you went and left me still breathing on that
mocking glass--"
"If so, what of it? Will not your breath fade also and join
mine where all vapours go? Or if it were yours that faded and
mine that remained for some few hours, is it not the same? I
think, Humphrey, that already you have seen a beloved breath melt
from the glass of life," she added, looking at me earnestly.
I bowed my head and answered:
"Yes, and therefore I am ashamed."
"Oh! why should you be ashamed, Humphrey, who are not sure but
When the World Shook |
