| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: said the lad with a smile.
Petrushka could read and write and knew Paulson's primer, his
only book, almost by heart, and he was fond of quoting sayings
from it that he thought suited the occasion, especially when he
had had something to drink, as to-day.
'That's so,' said Nikita.
'You must be chilled through and through,' said Petrushka.
'Yes, I am rather,' said Nikita, and they went across the yard
and the passage into the house.
IV
The household to which Vasili Andreevich had come was one of
Master and Man |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: authorities, with more health-drinking and speechifying, and the next morning,
when I come downstairs thankful to have done with it, I am confronted
by the altar still in its place, cake crumbs and candle-grease and all,
because any hasty removal of it would imply a most lamentable want
of sentiment, deplorable in anybody, but scandalous and disgusting
in a tender female. All birthdays are observed in this fashion, and not
a few wise persons go for a short trip just about the time theirs is due,
and I think I shall imitate them next year; only trips to the country
or seaside in December are not usually pleasant, and if I go to a town
there are sure to be relations in it, and then the cake will spring up
mushroom-like from the teeming soil of their affection.
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: be the happy man that will succeed in taming a nature so formidable
and gaining possession of a beauty so supreme. All that I have told
you being such well-established truth, I am persuaded that what they
say of the cause of Chrysostom's death, as our lad told us, is the
same. And so I advise you, senor, fail not to be present to-morrow
at his burial, which will be well worth seeing, for Chrysostom had
many friends, and it is not half a league from this place to where
he directed he should be buried."
"I will make a point of it," said Don Quixote, "and I thank you
for the pleasure you have given me by relating so interesting a tale."
"Oh," said the goatherd, "I do not know even the half of what has
Don Quixote |
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 Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Ye who contemn the fatted slave
Look on this emblem, and be brave.
Poem: IV
See in the print how, moved by whim,
Trumpeting Jumbo, great and grim,
Adjusts his trunk, like a cravat,
To noose that individual's hat.
The sacred Ibis in the distance
Joys to observe his bold resistance.
Poem: V
Mark, printed on the opposing page,
|
