| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: times, she had grown so enormous in the process that her husband told her
she looked unappetising, and had better remain upstairs and sew.
Sabina took on the extra work without any thought of extra pay. She loved
to stand behind the counter, cutting up slices of Anna's marvellous
chocolate-spotted confections, or doing up packets of sugar almonds in pink
and blue striped bags.
"You'll get varicose veins, like me," said Anna. "That's what the Frau's
got, too. No wonder the baby doesn't come! All her swelling's got into
her legs." And Hans was immensely interested.
During the morning business was comparatively slack. Sabina answered the
shop bell, attended to a few customers who drank a liqueur to warm their
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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 Republic by Plato: these things; suspicions and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and he begins
to reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to others. And when he
finds that the sum of his transgressions is great he will many a time like
a child start up in his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark
forebodings. But to him who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar
charmingly says, is the kind nurse of his age:
'Hope,' he says, 'cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and
holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey;--
hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man.'
How admirable are his words! And the great blessing of riches, I do not
say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to
The Republic |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: human creatures flocked to these great buildings, swarming about them
like ants on an ant-heap. Some were eager to rescue books from
oblivion or to copy manuscripts, others were helping the poor, but
nearly all were studying. Up above this countless multitude rose giant
statues that they had erected in their midst, and by the gleams of a
strange light from some luminary as powerful as the sun, I read the
inscriptions on the bases of the statues--Science, History,
Literature.
The light died out. Again I faced the young girl. Gradually she
slipped into the dreary sheath, into the ragged cere-cloths, and
became an aged woman again. Her familiar brought her a little dust,
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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 The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: men by the Thuillier circle.
As for the third floor on the street, it was made into two apartments;
one of which was occupied by M. Dutocq, clerk of the justice of peace,
a retired government employee, and a frequenter of the Thuillier
salon; the other by the hero of this Scene, about whom we must content
ourselves at the present moment by fixing the amount of his rent,--
namely, seven hundred francs a year,--and the location he had chosen
in the heart of this well-filled building, exactly three years before
the curtain rises on the present domestic drama.
The clerk, a bachelor of fifty, occupied the larger of the two
apartments on the third floor. He kept a cook, and the rent of the
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