| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: for whom his mother desired, above all things, to find a rich wife.
Perhaps this hope was the secret of the intimacy she still kept up
with the marquise, in whose salon, which was one of the first in
Paris, she might eventually be able to choose among many heiresses for
Georges' wife. The princess saw five years between the present moment
and her son's marriage,--five solitary and desolate years; for, in
order to obtain such a marriage for her son, she knew that her own
conduct must be marked in the corner with discretion.
The princess lived in the rue de Miromesnil, in a small house, of
which she occupied the ground-floor at a moderate rent. There she made
the most of the relics of her past magnificence. The elegance of 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 Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: so you were wrong--you haven't got your twopence," cried the mother
in a breath.
The boy came back, bitterly disappointed, for his twopence,
then went off without a word.
"I want to go, I want to go," said Annie, beginning to cry.
"Well, and you shall go, whining, wizzening little stick!"
said the mother. And later in the afternoon she trudged up the
hill under the tall hedge with her child. The hay was gathered
from the fields, and cattle were turned on to the eddish.
It was warm, peaceful.
Mrs. Morel did not like the wakes. There were two sets of horses,
Sons and Lovers |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: and not with the baseness of other men, that fatal exemplar for
impressionable minds. The brilliancy of his intellect had a keen
attraction for David. David admired his friend, while he kept him out
of the scrapes into which he was led by the furie francaise.
David, with his well-balanced mind and timid nature at variance with a
strong constitution, was by no means wanting in the persistence of the
Northern temper; and if he saw all the difficulties before him, none
the less he vowed to himself to conquer, never to give way. In him the
unswerving virtue of an apostle was softened by pity that sprang from
inexhaustible indulgence. In the friendship grown old already, one was
the worshiper, and that one was David; Lucien ruled him like a woman
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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 Under the Andes by Rex Stout: breathing space, save when our arriero led us, almost by
magic it seemed, to a camping place for the night. We would ascend
the side of a narrow valley; on one hand roared a torrent some
hundreds of feet below; on the other rose an uncompromising wall of
rock. So narrow would be the track that as I sat astride my mule
my outside leg would be hanging over the abyss.
But the grandeur, the novelty, and the variety of the scenery
repaid us; and Le Mire loved the danger for its own sake. Time and
again she swayed far out of her saddle until her body was literally
suspended in the air above some frightful chasm, while she turned
her head to laugh gaily at Harry and myself, who brought up the
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