| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: racket, rattle, clanking of chain, hiss of water, and mil-
lions of sparks flew up into the shivering column of smoke
that stood leaning slightly above the ship. The cat-
heads had burned away, and the two red-hot anchors had
gone to the bottom, tearing out after them two hundred
fathom of red-hot chain. The ship trembled, the mass of
flame swayed as if ready to collapse, and the fore top-
gallant-mast fell. It darted down like an arrow of fire,
shot under, and instantly leaping up within an oar's-
length of the boats, floated quietly, very black on the
luminous sea. I hailed the deck again. After some time
Youth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: of obedience, from which it had no business to swerve.
Justice, thus informed with monarchical enthusiasm, atoned for the
errors of the ancient parliaments, and walked, perhaps, too
ostentatiously hand in hand with religion. There was more zeal than
discretion shown; but justice sinned not so much in the direction of
machiavelism as by giving the candid expression to its views, when
those views appeared to be opposed to the general interests of a
country which must be put safely out of reach of revolutions. But
taken as a whole, there was still too much of the bourgeois element in
the administration; it was too readily moved by petty liberal
agitation; and as a result, it was inevitable that it should incline
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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 The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: mother in her last illness. And I adopted this baby; at least, I
am going to. He comes of respectable people, and his parents are
dead. His mother died when he was born. He is healthy, and I
thought him a beautiful baby."
"Yes, he is," assented Lawton, but he still looked somewhat
perplexed. "But why did you hurry off so and get him, Eudora?"
said he.
"I thought from what you said that day that you would be
disappointed when you found out I had only the Lancaster linen
and not a real baby," said Eudora with her calm, grand air and
with no trace of a smile.
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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 Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: new wonder, that two antagonists almost always divine each other's
inmost thoughts and ideas. Two enemies sometimes possess a power of
clear insight into mental processes, and read each other's minds as
two lovers read in either soul. So when we came together, the Countess
and I, I understood at once the reason of her antipathy for me,
disguised though it was by the most gracious forms of politeness and
civility. I had been forced to be her confidant, and a woman cannot
but hate the man before whom she is compelled to blush. And she on her
side knew that if I was the man in whom her husband placed confidence,
that husband had not as yet given up his fortune.
"I will spare you the conversation, but it abides in my memory as one
Gobseck |
