| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: to confess it, and I'd have thought what an encouraging thing it
would be for small boys nowadays who do naughty things and are
sorry for them to know that perhaps they may grow up to be ministers
in spite of it. That's how I'd feel, Marilla."
"The way I feel at present, Anne," said Marilla, "is that it's
high time you had those dishes washed. You've taken half an hour
longer than you should with all your chattering. Learn to work
first and talk afterwards."
CHAPTER XXVII
Vanity and Vexation of Spirit
Marilla, walking home one late April evening from an Aid meeting,
Anne of Green Gables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: did not go to bed, but began to reflect over the day's adventure.
The meeting, the introduction, the promise of Marguerite, had
followed one another so rapidly, and so unexpectedly, that there
were moments when it seemed to me I had been dreaming.
Nevertheless, it was not the first time that a girl like
Marguerite had promised herself to a man on the morrow of the day
on which he had asked for the promise.
Though, indeed, I made this reflection, the first impression
produced on me by my future mistress was so strong that it still
persisted. I refused obstinately to see in her a woman like other
women, and, with the vanity so common to all men, I was ready to
Camille |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: for such brilliant success. For the next fortnight she took Oscar to
walk daily, and watched him tyrannically. This brought matters to the
end of October. One morning as the poor household was breakfasting on
a salad of herring and lettuce, with milk for a dessert, Oscar beheld
with terror the formidable ex-steward, who entered the room and
surprised this scene of poverty.
"We are now living in Paris--but not as we lived at Presles," said
Moreau, wishing to make known to Madame Clapart the change in their
relations caused by Oscar's folly. "I shall seldom be here myself; for
I have gone into partnership with Pere Leger and Pere Margueron of
Beaumont. We are speculating in land, and we have begun by purchasing
|
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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte
thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so
early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of
their iron steed are frozen. On this morning of the Great Snow,
perchance, which is still raging and chilling men's blood, I bear
the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their
chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, without
long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England northeast
snow-storm, and I behold the plowmen covered with snow and rime,
their heads peering, above the mould-board which is turning down
other than daisies and the nests of field mice, like bowlders of the
Walden |
