| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: simply went on; "the other side of the medal's clear enough. I've
not been edifying - I believe I'm thought in a hundred quarters to
have been barely decent. I've followed strange paths and
worshipped strange gods; it must have come to you again and again -
in fact you've admitted to me as much - that I was leading, at any
time these thirty years, a selfish frivolous scandalous life. And
you see what it has made of me."
She just waited, smiling at him. "You see what it has made of ME."
"Oh you're a person whom nothing can have altered. You were born
to be what you are, anywhere, anyway: you've the perfection
nothing else could have blighted. And don't you see how, without
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: mat variegated by moisture and lustrous like the sheen of a silken
fabric. Shrubs, already in bloom, crowned the rocks with garlands.
Their waving foliage, eager for the freshness of the water, drooped
its tresses above the stream; the larches shook their light fringes
and played with the pines, stiff and motionless as aged men. This
luxuriant beauty was foiled by the solemn colonnades of the forest-
trees, rising in terraces upon the mountains, and by the calm sheet of
the fiord, lying below, where the torrent buried its fury and was
still. Beyond, the sea hemmed in this page of Nature, written by the
greatest of poets, Chance; to whom the wild luxuriance of creation
when apparently abandoned to itself is owing.
Seraphita |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: shillings a yard,--told the mercer, she was sorry she had given him so much
trouble;--and immediately went and bought herself a yard-wide stuff of ten-
pence a yard.--'Tis the duplication of one and the same greatness of soul;
only what lessened the honour of it, somewhat, in my mother's case, was,
that she could not heroine it into so violent and hazardous an extreme, as
one in her situation might have wished, because the old midwife had really
some little claim to be depended upon,--as much, at least, as success could
give her; having, in the course of her practice of near twenty years in the
parish, brought every mother's son of them into the world without any one
slip or accident which could fairly be laid to her account.
These facts, tho' they had their weight, yet did not altogether satisfy
|
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 An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: He heard the detachment that was coming through the forest reach the
iron gates and turn into the main road, where before long it would
meet the squad coming up from the other direction.
"Still five or six minutes!" he said.
At that instant the countess appeared. Michu took her with a firm hand
and pushed her into the covered way.
"Keep straight before you! Lead her to where my horse is," he said to
his wife, "and remember that gendarmes have ears."
Seeing Catherine, who carried the hat and whip, and Gothard leading
the mare, the man, keen-witted in presence of danger, bethought
himself of playing the gendarmes a trick as useful as the one he had
|
