| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: her capacity for social intercourse. Before long it became
apparent to him that the Baroness was disposed to lay no tax
upon such a monopoly.
One day (he was sitting there again and playing with a fan)
she asked him to apologize, should the occasion present itself,
to certain people in Boston for her not having returned their calls.
"There are half a dozen places," she said; "a formidable list.
Charlotte Wentworth has written it out for me, in a terrifically
distinct hand. There is no ambiguity on the subject;
I know perfectly where I must go. Mr. Wentworth informs me that
the carriage is always at my disposal, and Charlotte offers to go
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: the alarm everywhere. Above all, send me a word we will agree upon to
let me know if the Spanish priest is officially recognized as Jacques
Collin. Get your business at the Palais over by two o'clock, and I
will have arranged for you to have an interview with the Keeper of the
Seals; perhaps I may find him with the Marquise d'Espard."
Camusot stood squarely with a look of admiration that made his knowing
wife smile.
"Now, come to dinner and be cheerful," said she in conclusion. "Why,
you see! We have been only two years in Paris, and here you are on the
highroad to be made Councillor before the end of the year. From that
to the Presidency of a court, my dear, there is no gulf but what some
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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 Crito by Plato: take care of them? Nay; but if they who call themselves friends are good
for anything, they will--to be sure they will.
'Listen, then, Socrates, to us who have brought you up. Think not of life
and children first, and of justice afterwards, but of justice first, that
you may be justified before the princes of the world below. For neither
will you nor any that belong to you be happier or holier or juster in this
life, or happier in another, if you do as Crito bids. Now you depart in
innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil; a victim, not of the laws,
but of men. But if you go forth, returning evil for evil, and injury for
injury, breaking the covenants and agreements which you have made with us,
and wronging those whom you ought least of all to wrong, that is to say,
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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 Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: it. I'll make a man of my scarecrow, were it only for the joke's
sake!"
While muttering these words, Mother Rigby took the pipe from her
own mouth and thrust it into the crevice which represented the
same feature in the pumpkin visage of the scarecrow.
"Puff, darling, puff!" said she. "Puff away, my fine fellow! your
life depends on it!"
This was a strange exhortation, undoubtedly, to be addressed to a
mere thing of sticks, straw, and old clothes, with nothing better
than a shrivelled pumpkin for a head,--as we know to have been
the scarecrow's case. Nevertheless, as we must carefully hold in
Mosses From An Old Manse |
