| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: and play," she added, turning sternly to her eldest, who, because
he was the least naughty, usually bore the brunt of her wrath
against the others.
"Well, perhaps Mr. Hawkins can help you," Mrs. Hawkins
continued meditatively, while the children, after scattering at her
bidding, returned to their previous pursuits like flies settling
down on the spot from which an exasperated hand has swept them.
"I'll send him right round the minute he comes in, and you can tell
him the whole story. I wouldn't wonder but what he can find that
Mrs. Hochmuller's address in the d'rectory. I know they've got one
where he works."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: and innocence about him. The treasures he poured from the inner to the
outer were like a mantle with which he covered his squalid life. The
most supercilious parvenu would have felt it ignoble to care for the
frame in which this glorious old apostle of the musical religion lived
and moved and had his being.
"Hey! by what good luck do I see you here, dear Madame la comtesse?"
he said. "Must I sing the canticle of Simeon at my age?" (This idea so
tickled him that he laughed immoderately.) "Truly I'm 'en bonne
fortune.'" (And again he laughed like a merry child.) "But, ah!" he
said, changing to melancholy, "you come for the music, and not for a
poor old man like me. Yes, I know that; but come for what you will, I
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: capitibus in Oceanum influit.]
Caesar cum ab hoste non amplius passuum XII: milibus abesset, ut erat
constitutum, ad eum legati revertuntur; qui in itinere congressi magnopere
ne longius progrederetur orabant. Cum id non impetrassent, petebant uti
ad eos [equites] qui agmen antecessissent praemitteret eos pugna
prohiberet, sibique ut potestatem faceret in Ubios legatos mittendi;
quorum si principes ac senatus sibi iure iurando fidem fecisset, ea
condicione quae a Caesare ferretur se usuros ostendebant: ad has res
conficiendas sibi tridui spatium daret. Haec omnia Caesar eodem illo
pertinere arbitrabatur ut tridui mora interposita equites eorum qui
abessent reverterentur; tamen sese non longius milibus passuum IIII
|
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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: spoken of to Miss Staverton as ministering so little, for those who
might have watched it, to edification, he was positively rather
liked than not. He was a dim secondary social success - and all
with people who had truly not an idea of him. It was all mere
surface sound, this murmur of their welcome, this popping of their
corks - just as his gestures of response were the extravagant
shadows, emphatic in proportion as they meant little, of some game
of OMBRES CHINOISES. He projected himself all day, in thought,
straight over the bristling line of hard unconscious heads and into
the other, the real, the waiting life; the life that, as soon as he
had heard behind him the click of his great house-door, began for
|
