| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: in them perhaps a hundred years ago? And, lo! as one looks on
these poor relics of a bygone generation, the universe changes in
the twinkling of an eye; old George the Second is back again, and
the elder Pitt is coming into power, and General Wolfe is a fine,
promising young man, and over the Channel they are pulling the
Sieur Damiens to pieces with wild horses, and across the Atlantic
the Indians are tomahawking Hirams and Jonathans and Jonases at
Fort William Henry; all the dead people who have been in the dust
so long - even to the stout-armed cook that made the pastry - are
alive again; the planet unwinds a hundred of its luminous coils,
and the precession of the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: Lanstrac." I have ruined myself for her as men ruin themselves for
a mistress, but I knew it all along. Between ourselves, I am
neither a fool nor a weak man. A fool does not let himself be
ruled with his eyes open by a passion; and a man who starts for
India to reconstruct his fortune, instead of blowing out his
brains, is not weak.
I shall return rich, or I shall never return at all. Only, my dear
friend, as I want wealth solely for HER, as I must be absent six
years at least, and as I will not risk being duped in any way, I
confide to you my wife. I know no better guardian. Being
childless, a lover might be dangerous to her. Henri! I love her
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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 Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: (learned from the pulpit) of rounding an uneuphonious
sentence by dwelling on a single syllable - of striking a
balance in a top-heavy period by lengthening out a word into
a melancholy quaver. Withal, they never cease to hope. Even
at last, even when they have exhausted all their ideas, even
after the would-be peroration has finally refused to
perorate, they remain upon their feet with their mouths open,
waiting for some further inspiration, like Chaucer's widow's
son in the dung-hole, after
'His throat was kit unto the nekke bone,'
in vain expectation of that seed that was to be laid upon his
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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 Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: I guessed at once (as perhaps the reader will also have guessed, if,
like myself, he is very clever at drawing conclusions) that my Lady was
the Sub-Warden's wife, and that Uggug (a hideous fat boy, about the
same age as Sylvie, with the expression of a prize-pig) was their son.
Sylvie and Bruno, with the Lord Chancellor, made up a party of seven.
[Image...A portable plunge-bath]
"And you actually got a plunge-bath every morning?" said the Sub-Warden,
seemingly in continuation of a conversation with the Professor.
"Even at the little roadside-inns?"
"Oh, certainly, certainly!" the Professor replied with a smile on his
jolly face. "Allow me to explain. It is, in fact, a very simple problem
Sylvie and Bruno |
