| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: of Ptolemy, the consternation of the priests, the scandal to religion;
when Conon, the court-astronomer, luckily searching the heavens, finds
the missing tresses in an utterly unexpected place--as a new
constellation of stars, which to this day bears the title of Coma
Berenices. It is so convenient to believe the fact, that everybody
believes it accordingly; and Callimachus writes an elegy thereon, in
which the constellified, or indeed deified tresses, address in most
melodious and highly-finished Greek, bedizened with concetto on
concetto, that fair and sacred head whereon they grew, to be shorn from
which is so dire a sorrow, that apotheosis itself can hardly reconcile
them to the parting.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the
precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater
depth to the dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop
was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the
tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the
reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as
if the vessel was suspended in the air.
It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of
the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and
flower of the adjacent country Old farmers, a spare leathern-
faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: in his ship, and whom he had met later on at Hadlow.
What was her name--Martin? No--Madden. He confronted the swift
impression that there was something odd about these two
women being together. At Hadlow he had imagined that they
did not like each other. Then he reflected as swiftly
that women probably had their own rules about such matters.
He seemed to have heard, or read, perhaps, that females
liked and disliked each other with the most capricious
alternations and on the least tangible of grounds.
At all events, here they were together now. That was
quite enough.
The Market-Place |
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 Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: to death. He had sounded the crater of power; he came away from it
with the beginnings of brain fever. The disease made rapid progress;
we nursed him. Juste at once called in the chief physician of the
hospital where he was working as house-surgeon. I was then living
alone in our room, and I was the most attentive attendant; but care
and science alike were in vain. By the month of January, 1838, Marcas
himself felt that he had but a few days to live.
The man whose soul and brain he had been for six months never even
sent to inquire after him. Marcas expressed the greatest contempt for
the Government; he seemed to doubt what the fate of France might be,
and it was this doubt that had made him ill. He had, he thought,
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