| 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: regret; society joins in the grief, and alleviates while it magnifies
it. But there is another sorrow of mothers who alone know what their
child was really; who alone have received his smiles and observed the
treasures of a life too soon cut short. That sorrow hides its woe, the
blackness of which surpasses all other mourning; it cannot be
described; happily there are but few women whose heart-strings are
thus severed.
Before Madame du Bousquier returned to town, Madame du Ronceret, one
of her good friends, had driven out to Prebaudet to fling this corpse
upon the roses of her joy, to show her the love she had ignored, and
sweetly shed a thousand drops of wormwood into the honey of her bridal
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: "Well, I think he is a little," Cassandra replied. "Queer, but very
fascinating. I shall read Milton to-night. It's been one of the
happiest nights of my life, Katharine," she added, looking with shy
devotion at her cousin's beautiful face.
CHAPTER XXVII
London, in the first days of spring, has buds that open and flowers
that suddenly shake their petals--white, purple, or crimson--in
competition with the display in the garden beds, although these city
flowers are merely so many doors flung wide in Bond Street and the
neighborhood, inviting you to look at a picture, or hear a symphony,
or merely crowd and crush yourself among all sorts of vocal,
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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 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: managed to make it four, what with losing myself among the trees,
and sinking up to the neck in snow: a predicament which only those
who have experienced it can appreciate. At any rate, whatever were
my wanderings, the clock chimed twelve as I entered the house; and
that gave exactly an hour for every mile of the usual way from
Wuthering Heights.
My human fixture and her satellites rushed to welcome me;
exclaiming, tumultuously, they had completely given me up:
everybody conjectured that I perished last night; and they were
wondering how they must set about the search for my remains. I bid
them be quiet, now that they saw me returned, and, benumbed to my
Wuthering Heights |
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 Disputation of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther: is wrong to pray for the redeemed?"
84. Again: -- "What is this new piety of God and the pope,
that for money they allow a man who is impious and their enemy
to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and
do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul's own
need, free it for pure love's sake?"
85. Again: -- "Why are the penitential canons long since in
actual fact and through disuse abrogated and dead, now
satisfied by the granting of indulgences, as though they were
still alive and in force?"
86. Again: -- "Why does not the pope, whose wealth is to-day
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