| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: have a box at the post-office - generally, I regret to say, empty.
Could your recommendation introduce me to an American publisher?
My next book I should really try to get hold of here, as its
interest is international, and the more I am in this country the
more I understand the weight of your influence. It is pleasant to
be thus most at home abroad, above all, when the prophet is still
not without honour in his own land. . . .
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA, 15TH NOVEMBER 1879.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - Your letter was to me such a bright spot that I
answer it right away to the prejudice of other correspondents 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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: a native of Provence.
This double operation of Dumay's was worth a fortune to the house of
Mignon. The colonel purchased the villa at Ingouville and rewarded his
agent with the gift of a modest little house in the rue Royale. The
poor toiler had brought back from New York, together with his cottons,
a pretty little wife, attracted it would seem by his French nature.
Miss Grummer was worth about four thousand dollars (twenty thousand
francs), which sum Dumay placed with his colonel, to whom he now
became an alter ego. In a short time he learned to keep his patron's
books, a science which, to use his own expression, pertains to the
sergeant-majors of commerce. The simple-hearted soldier, whom fortune
Modeste Mignon |
