| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: manoeuvre, and advised him to break with Sylvie and marry Pierrette,
he certainly flattered Gouraud's foible; but after analyzing the inner
purpose of that advice and examining the ground all about him, the
colonel thought he perceived in his ally the intention of separating
him from Sylvie, and profiting by her fears to throw the whole Rogron
property into the hands of Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf.
Therefore, when the colonel was left alone with Sylvie his
perspicacity possessed itself immediately of certain signs which
betrayed her uneasiness. He saw at once that she was under arms and
had made this plan for seeing him alone. As he already suspected Vinet
of playing him some trick, he attributed the conference to the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they
take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten.
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it
and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks
poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults
even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps
have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse.
The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as
brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its
door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live
as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
Walden |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: a carriage with servants, and is said to have sixty thousand
francs a year. However, they are very quiet tenants, as you are,
monsieur; and economical! they live on nothing, and as soon as a
letter is brought they pay for it. It is a queer thing, monsieur,
the mother's name is not the same as the daughter's. Ah, but when
they go for a walk in the Tuileries, mademoiselle is very smart,
and she never goes out but she is followed by a lot of young men;
but she shuts the door in their face, and she is quite right. The
proprietor would never allow----"
The coach having come, Hippolyte heard no more, and went home.
His mother, to whom he related his adventure, dressed his wound
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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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: needed, by the fact that those males most actively employed in attempting
to readjust the relations of the mass of labouring males to the new
conditions of life, are sometimes precisely those males who are most
bitterly opposed to woman in her attempt to readjust her own position. Not
even by the members of those professions, generally regarded as the
strongholds of obstructionism and prejudice, has a more short-sighted
opposition often been made to the attempts of woman to enter new fields of
labour, than have again and again been made by male hand-workers, whether
as isolated individuals or in their corporate capacity as trade unions.
They have, at least in some certain instances, endeavoured to exclude
women, not merely from new fields of intellectual and social labour, but
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