| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: rather differently from some who, rich when they set out, came back
heavy with leprosy, but light with gold. On his return from Tunis, our
Lord, King Philippe, made him a Count, and appointed him his seneschal
in our country and that of Poitou. There he was greatly beloved and
properly thought well of, since over and above his good qualities he
founded the Church of the Carmes-Deschaulx, in the parish of
Egrignolles, as the peace-offering to Heaven for the follies of his
youth. Thus was he cardinally consigned to the good graces of the
Church and of God. From a wicked youth and reckless man, he became a
good, wise man, and discreet in his dissipations and pleasures; rarely
was in anger, unless someone blasphemed God before him, the which he
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: startling) as I have been trying to point out on the sea-shore.
Moreover, each and every one of the party, I will warrant, will
find his fellow-correspondents (perhaps previously unknown to him)
men worth knowing; not, it may be, of the meditative and half-
saintly type of dear old Izaak Walton (who, after all, was no fly-
fisher, but a sedentary "popjoy" guilty of float and worm), but
rather, like his fly-fishing disciple Cotton, good fellows and men
of the world, and, perhaps, something better over and above.
The suggestion has been made. Will it ever be taken up, and a
"Naiad Club" formed, for the combination of sport and science?
And, now, how can this desultory little treatise end more usefully
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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 Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: backwards before that tailor from Tennessee, and scattered flowers
for him to walk on, and Homer stood behind his chair and waited on
him at the banquet. Of course that didn't go for much THERE,
amongst all those big foreigners from other systems, as they hadn't
heard of Shakespeare or Homer either, but it would amount to
considerable down there on our little earth if they could know
about it. I wish there was something in that miserable
spiritualism, so we could send them word. That Tennessee village
would set up a monument to Billings, then, and his autograph would
outsell Satan's. Well, they had grand times at that reception - a
small-fry noble from Hoboken told me all about it - Sir Richard
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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 An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or
other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger. Even the
Freemasons, who have been shown up to satiety, preserve a kind of
pride; and not a grocer among them, however honest, harmless, and
empty-headed he may feel himself to be at bottom, but comes home
from one of their COENACULA with a portentous significance for
himself.
It is an odd thing, how happily two people, if there are two, can
live in a place where they have no acquaintance. I think the
spectacle of a whole life in which you have no part paralyses
personal desire. You are content to become a mere spectator. The
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