| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: nevertheless, in number and value. Phileas Fogg, like a
racehorse, was drawing near his last turning-point. The bonds
were quoted, no longer at a hundred below par, but at twenty,
at ten, and at five; and paralytic old Lord Albemarle bet even
in his favour.
A great crowd was collected in Pall Mall and the neighbouring
streets on Saturday evening; it seemed like a multitude of brokers
permanently established around the Reform Club. Circulation
was impeded, and everywhere disputes, discussions, and financial
transactions were going on. The police had great difficulty in
keeping back the crowd, and as the hour when Phileas Fogg
Around the World in 80 Days |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: hands, his stammered words, his intelligent laugh fail to rouse her
from her reverie. If he was tired, his care for her kept him from
complaining.
"Poor, dear, little sensitive!" cried the countess as he fell asleep
tired with some play which had driven the sad memories from her mind,
"how can you live in this world? who will understand you? who will
love you? who will see the treasures hidden in that frail body? No
one! Like me, you are alone on earth."
She sighed and wept. The graceful pose of her child lying on her knees
made her smile sadly. She looked at him long, tasting one of those
pleasures which are a secret between mothers and God. Etienne's
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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 Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: of the line, the sight of the rising fish--it all brings back a
hundred woodland memories, and thoughts of good fishing comrades,
some far away across the sea, and, perhaps, even now sitting around
the forest camp-fire in Maine or Canada, and some with whom we
shall keep company no more until we cross the greater ocean into
that happy country whither they have preceded us.
V.
Instead of going straight down the valley by the high road, a drive
of an hour, to the railway in the Pusterthal, I walked up over the
mountains to the east, across the Platzwiesen, and so down through
the Pragserthal. In one arm of the deep fir-clad vale are 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 Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: TALKABILITY
A PRELUDE AND THEME WITH VARIATIONS
"He praises a meditative life, and with evident sincerity: but we
feel that he liked nothing so well as good talk."--JAMES RUSSELL
LOWELL: Walton.
I
PRELUDE--ON AN OLD, FOOLISH MAXIM
The inventor of the familiar maxim that "fishermen must not talk" is
lost in the mists of antiquity, and well deserves his fate. For a
more foolish rule, a conventionality more obscure and aimless in its
tyranny, was never imposed upon an innocent and honourable
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