| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: of fish, and crawling to sleep into the snow. Buck was ravenous.
The pound and a half of sun-dried salmon, which was his ration for
each day, seemed to go nowhere. He never had enough, and suffered
from perpetual hunger pangs. Yet the other dogs, because they
weighed less and were born to the life, received a pound only of
the fish and managed to keep in good condition.
He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old
life. A dainty eater, he found that his mates, finishing first,
robbed him of his unfinished ration. There was no defending it.
While he was fighting off two or three, it was disappearing down
the throats of the others. To remedy this, he ate as fast as
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: "The existence of an outside Providence," he writes, "who created
us, who watches over us, and who guides our lives like a Merciful
Father, we have found impossible longer to believe in. But of the
existence of a Holy Spirit radiating upward through all animate
beings, and finding its fullest expression, in man in love, and in
the flowers in beauty, we can be as certain as of anything in the
world. This fiery spiritual impulsion at the centre and the source
of things, ever burning in us, is the supremely important factor in
our existence. It does not always attain to light. In many
directions it fails; the conditions are too hard and it is utterly
blocked. In others it only partially succeeds. But in a few it
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: "But I have never taken yet
A strict domestic part,
And in my flurry I forget
The Five Good Rules of Etiquette
We have to know by heart."
My sympathies were warming fast
Towards the little fellow:
He was so utterly aghast
At having found a Man at last,
And looked so scared and yellow.
"At least," I said, "I'm glad to find
|
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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: Paris."
Dumay requested Gobenheim to do without him in future, and then went
back to the Chalet, which he reached just as Modeste was sealing her
two letters, to her father and Canalis. Except for the address the
letters were precisely alike both in weight and appearance. Modeste
thought she had laid that to her father over that to her Melchior, but
had, in fact, done exactly the reverse. This mistake, so often made in
the little things of life, occasioned the discovery of her secret by
Dumay and her mother. The former was talking vehemently to Madame
Mignon in the salon, and revealing to her his fresh fears caused by
Modeste's duplicity and Butscha's connivance.
Modeste Mignon |
