| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: of Spanish gold of the kind they call doubloons, worth about five
thousand francs; and in a little sealed box ten thousand francs worth
of diamonds. The paper said that in case he should not return, he left
us this money and these diamonds in trust to found masses to thank God
for his escape and for his salvation.
" 'At that time I still had my husband, who ran off in search of him.
And this is the queer part of the story: he brought back the
Spaniard's clothes, which he had found under a big stone on a sort of
breakwater along the river bank, nearly opposite la Grande Breteche.
My husband went so early that no one saw him. After reading the
letter, he burnt the clothes, and, in obedience to Count Feredia's
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: favor, is more than that of color; and that of decent
and gracious motion, more than that of favor. That
is the best part of beauty, which a picture cannot
express; no, nor the first sight of the life. There is no
excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness
in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether
Apelles, or Albert Durer, were the more trifler;
whereof the one, would make a personage by geo-
metrical proportions; the other, by taking the best
parts out of divers faces, to make one excellent.
Such personages, I think, would please nobody,
Essays of Francis Bacon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: you. Send for them."
"I'll do it, Sandy. But what was it you was saying about
unsacrilegious things, which people expect to get, and will be
disappointed about?"
"Oh, there are a lot of such things that people expect and don't
get. For instance, there's a Brooklyn preacher by the name of
Talmage, who is laying up a considerable disappointment for
himself. He says, every now and then in his sermons, that the
first thing he does when he gets to heaven, will be to fling his
arms around Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and kiss them and weep on
them. There's millions of people down there on earth that are
|
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 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: spread out the set.
"Are they mine?" she asked incredulously.
"They are, certainly," said he.
He looked into the fire. He remembered how, when he
was a lad of fifteen, his godmother, the Squire's
wife--the only rich person with whom he had ever come
in contact--had pinned her faith to his success; had
prophesied a wondrous career for him. There had seemed
nothing at all out of keeping with such a conjectured
career in the storing up of these showy ornaments for
his wife and the wives of her descendants. They
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
