| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: delirium,--the madness that underlies all revolution, all
progress, and all fall?
You laugh at the shallow temptation? You see the error
underlying its argument so clearly,--that to him a true life was
one of full development rather than self-restraint? that he was
deaf to the higher tone in a cry of voluntary suffering for
truth's sake than in the fullest flow of spontaneous harmony?
I do not plead his cause. I only want to show you the mote in
my brother's eye: then you can see clearly to take it out.
The money,--there it lay on his knee, a little blotted slip of
paper, nothing in itself; used to raise him out of the pit,
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: capitalists and men of business, who weigh the earth, and the dust
of it, in a balance. They know the world, surely; and what is the
mystery of life to us, is none to them. They can surely show us how
to live, while we live, and to gather out of the present world what
is best.
I think I can best tell you their answer, by telling you a dream I
had once. For though I am no poet, I have dreams sometimes:- I
dreamed I was at a child's Mayday party, in which every means of
entertainment had been provided for them, by a wise and kind host.
It was in a stately house, with beautiful gardens attached to it;
and the children had been set free in the rooms and gardens, with no
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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 Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: nephew's so-called mistress. His anger died away at the gracious
exclamation which came from his lips as he looked at her. By one of
those fortunate accidents which happen only to pretty women, it was a
moment when all her beauties shone with peculiar lustre, due perhaps
to the wax-lights, to the charming simplicity of her dress, to the
ineffable atmosphere of elegance that surrounded her. One must needs
have studied the transitions of an evening in a Parisian salon to
appreciate the imperceptible lights and shades which color a woman's
face and vary it. There comes a moment when, content with her toilet,
pleased with her own wit, delighted to be admired, and feeling herself
the queen of a salon full of remarkable men who smile to her, the
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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 Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: dispersed, and for the same reasons; we are almost a match for the
world. If you will enlist as a soldier, I will be your captain. Obey
me as a wife obeys her husband, as a child obeys his mother, and I
will guarantee that you shall be Marquis de Rubempre in less than six
months; you shall marry into one of the proudest houses in the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, and some day you shall sit on a bench with
peers of France. What would you have been at this moment if I had not
amused you by my conversation?--An undiscovered corpse in a deep bed
of mud. Well and good, now for an effort of imagination----"
Lucien looked curiously at his protector.
"Here, in this caleche beside the Abbe Carlos Herrera, canon of
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