| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: commonwealth. Even its secondary lights, and those who in my day
made the stranger welcome, have since deserted it. The good
Lachevre has departed, carrying his household gods; and long before
that Gaston Lafenestre was taken from our midst by an untimely
death. He died before he had deserved success; it may be, he would
never have deserved it; but his kind, comely, modest countenance
still haunts the memory of all who knew him. Another - whom I will
not name - has moved farther on, pursuing the strange Odyssey of
his decadence. His days of royal favour had departed even then;
but he still retained, in his narrower life at Barbizon, a certain
stamp of conscious importance, hearty, friendly, filling the room,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: life, and regard themselves as beasts of burden. Nothing so provokes a
man with a heart as this strategy. Women can only use it with those
who worship them.
"She turned to me. 'Do you suppose,' she said scornfully, 'that a
Count would have uttered such an insult even if the thought had
entered his mind? For my misfortune I have lived with dukes,
ambassadors, and great lords, and I know their ways. How intolerable
it makes bourgeois life! After all, a playwright is not a Rastignac
nor a Rhetore----'
"Du Bruel looked ghastly at this. Two days afterwards we met in the
/foyer/ at the Opera, and took a few turns together. The conversation
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: Antonia remarked. `Mary Svoboda's the best butter-maker
in all this country, and a fine manager. Her children will
have a grand chance.'
As Antonia turned over the pictures the young Cuzaks stood behind her chair,
looking over her shoulder with interested faces. Nina and Jan,
after trying to see round the taller ones, quietly brought a chair,
climbed up on it, and stood close together, looking. The little boy forgot
his shyness and grinned delightedly when familiar faces came into view.
In the group about Antonia I was conscious of a kind of physical harmony.
They leaned this way and that, and were not afraid to touch each other.
They contemplated the photographs with pleased recognition; looked at
My Antonia |
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 Charmides by Plato: be wise or temperate, but not know his own wisdom or temperance?
But that, Socrates, he said, is impossible; and therefore if this is, as
you imply, the necessary consequence of any of my previous admissions, I
will withdraw them, rather than admit that a man can be temperate or wise
who does not know himself; and I am not ashamed to confess that I was in
error. For self-knowledge would certainly be maintained by me to be the
very essence of knowledge, and in this I agree with him who dedicated the
inscription, 'Know thyself!' at Delphi. That word, if I am not mistaken,
is put there as a sort of salutation which the god addresses to those who
enter the temple; as much as to say that the ordinary salutation of 'Hail!'
is not right, and that the exhortation 'Be temperate!' would be a far
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