| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: he thought he could guess what it was.
The next and following days Hippolyte threw himself into his
work, and to try to conquer his passion by the swift rush of
ideas and the ardor of composition. He half succeeded. Study
consoled him, though it could not smother the memories of so many
tender hours spent with Adelaide.
One evening, as he left his studio, he saw the door of the
ladies' rooms half open. Somebody was standing in the recess of
the window, and the position of the door and the staircase made
it impossible that the painter should pass without seeing
Adelaide. He bowed coldly, with a glance of supreme indifference;
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: angustias ire non poterant. His cum sua sponte persuadere non possent,
legatos ad Dumnorigem Haeduum mittunt, ut eo deprecatore a Sequanis
impetrarent. Dumnorix gratia et largitione apud Sequanos plurimum poterat
et Helvetiis erat amicus, quod ex ea civitate Orgetorigis filiam in
matrimonium duxerat, et cupiditate regni adductus novis rebus studebat et
quam plurimas civitates suo beneficio habere obstrictas volebat. Itaque
rem suscipit et a Sequanis impetrat ut per fines suos Helvetios ire
patiantur, obsidesque uti inter sese dent perficit: Sequani, ne itinere
Helvetios prohibeant, Helvetii, ut sine maleficio et iniuria transeant.
Caesari renuntiatur Helvetiis esse in animo per agrum Sequanorum et
Haeduorum iter in Santonum fines facere, qui non longe a Tolosatium
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: believe, Mr. Clarke;--sinking-fund,--what did you say was your
sinking-fund?"
"Twelve hundred hands?" said the stranger, the young man who
had first spoken. "Do you control their votes, Kirby?"
"Control? No." The young man smiled complacently. "But my
father brought seven hundred votes to the polls for his
candidate last November. No force-work, you understand,--only
a speech or two, a hint to form themselves into a society, and
a bit of red and blue bunting to make them a flag. The
Invincible Roughs,--I believe that is their name. I forget the
motto: 'Our country's hope,' I think."
Life in the Iron-Mills |
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 Menexenus by Plato: The author of the Menexenus, whether Plato or not, is evidently intending
to ridicule the practice, and at the same time to show that he can beat the
rhetoricians in their own line, as in the Phaedrus he may be supposed to
offer an example of what Lysias might have said, and of how much better he
might have written in his own style. The orators had recourse to their
favourite loci communes, one of which, as we find in Lysias, was the
shortness of the time allowed them for preparation. But Socrates points
out that they had them always ready for delivery, and that there was no
difficulty in improvising any number of such orations. To praise the
Athenians among the Athenians was easy,--to praise them among the
Lacedaemonians would have been a much more difficult task. Socrates
|
