| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: with their partners beyond Yes and No. Also, the law of the old sign
of the Cat and Racket commanded that they should be home by eleven
o'clock, the hour when balls and fetes begin to be lively. Thus their
pleasures, which seemed to conform very fairly to their father's
position, were often made insipid by circumstances which were part of
the family habits and principles.
As to their usual life, one remark will sufficiently paint it. Madame
Guillaume required her daughters to be dressed very early in the
morning, to come down every day at the same hour, and she ordered
their employments with monastic regularity. Augustine, however, had
been gifted by chance with a spirit lofty enough to feel the emptiness
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: draft, nor with what spirit (our vanities once properly mortified)
he threw himself into the business of collecting signatures. It
was his part, on the ground of his Italian, to see and arrange with
the actor; it was mine to write in the ACADEMY a notice of the
first performance of MACBETH. Fleeming opened the paper, read so
far, and flung it on the floor. 'No,' he cried, 'that won't do.
You were thinking of yourself, not of Salvini!' The criticism was
shrewd as usual, but it was unfair through ignorance; it was not of
myself that I was thinking, but of the difficulties of my trade
which I had not well mastered. Another unalloyed dramatic pleasure
which Fleeming and I shared the year of the Paris Exposition, was
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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 On Horsemanship by Xenophon: him seize the instant not to impose severe exertion on him, like a
taskmaster, but rather to caress and coax him, as if anxious to give
him a rest. In this way the horse will be encouraged and fall into a
rapid pace.
[8] i.e. "the ends of the axles (at the point of junction) which work
into each other are broad and smooth, so as to play freely at the
join."
[9] "Behaves compliantly."
That a horse takes pleasure in swift movement, may be shown
conclusively. As soon as he has got his liberty, he sets off at a trot
or gallop, never at a walking pace; so natural and instinctive a
On Horsemanship |
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 Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: head of the house, but Rhett only laughed and said that Mammy was
the real head of the house.
He infuriated Scarlett by saying coolly that he was preparing to be
very sorry for her some years hence, when the Republican rule was
gone from Georgia and the Democrats back in power.
"When the Democrats get a governor and a legislature of their own,
all your new vulgar Republican friends will be wiped off the chess
board and sent back to minding bars and emptying slops where they
belong. And you'll be left out on the end of a limb, with never a
Democratic friend or a Republican either. Well, take no thought of
the morrow."
Gone With the Wind |
