| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: hand, turned on the hinges. I saw my landlady come in, a buxom, florid
dame, always good-humored, who had missed her calling in life. She was
a Fleming, who ought to have seen the light in a picture by Teniers.
" 'Well, monsieur,' said she, 'Monsieur Regnault has no doubt been
giving you his history of la Grande Breteche?'
" 'Yes, Madame Lepas.'
" 'And what did he tell you?'
"I repeated in a few words the creepy and sinister story of Madame de
Merret. At each sentence my hostess put her head forward, looking at
me with an innkeeper's keen scrutiny, a happy compromise between the
instinct of a police constable, the astuteness of a spy, and the
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: and while he still wielded the pick, but now with staggering
and uncertain blows, repeated to himself, as it were the
burthen of a song, 'Hurry, hurry, hurry;' and then again,
'There is no time to lose; the marsh has an ill name, ill
name;' and then back to 'Hurry, hurry, hurry,' with a
dreadful, mechanical, hurried, and yet wearied utterance, as
a sick man rolls upon his pillow. The sweat had disappeared;
he was now dry, but all that I could see of him, of the same
dull brick red. Presently his pick unearthed the bag of
jewels; but he did not observe it, and continued hewing at
the soil.
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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 Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: loves to inflict wounds and injuries just for the sake of showing
power, and which is never so happy as when it is making some one
wince. There are such people in the world, and sometimes their
brilliancy tempts us to forget their malignancy. But to have much
converse with them is as if we should make playmates of rattlesnakes
for their grace of movement and swiftness of stroke.
I knew a man once (I will not name him even with an initial) who was
malignant to the core. Learned, industrious, accomplished, he kept
all his talents at the service of a perfect genius for hatred. If
you crossed his path but once, he would never cease to curse you.
The grave might close over you, but he would revile your epitaph and
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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 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited
imagination, --the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside,
the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the
dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the
thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too,
which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then
startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across
his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came
winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was
ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with
a witch's token. His only resource on such occasions, either to
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
