| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: YE so to devour them, ere long would some recompense be
made, for we would urge our plea throughout the town,
begging back our substance, until all should be restored.
But now without remedy are the pains that ye lay up in my
heart.'
{* Cf. B. xxi. 131. For the use of the 1st pers. pl. like
our ROYAL plural, cf. B. xvi.44, Il. vii. 190.}
So spake he in wrath, and dashed the staff to the ground,
and brake forth in tears; and pity fell on all the people.
Then all the others held their peace, and none had the
heart to answer Telemachus with hard words, but Antinous
The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: Poppaea played with Nero--many women, like the wives of King
Henry VIII, have paid for such a perilous delight with all the
blood in their veins. Grim presentiment! Even as she
surrendered the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt
the close pressure of his hand, the little hand of a man whose
greatness she could not mistake; even as she herself played with
his dark, thick locks, in that boudoir where she reigned a queen,
the Duchess would say to herself--
"This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out that I
am playing with him."
Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o'clock in the
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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 Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: whichever I fling thee, and betweenwhiles protect the team."
He stepped a space in advance and waited between two pines. The
dogs of the camp were disturbing the night with their jangle, and
he watched for their coming. A dark spot, growing rapidly, took
form upon the dim white expanse of snow. It was a forerunner of
the pack, leaping cleanly, and, after the wolf fashion, singing
direction to its brothers. Hitchcock stood in the shadow. As it
sprang past, he reached out, gripped its forelegs in mid-career,
and sent it whirling earthward. Then he struck it a well-judged
blow beneath the ear, and flung it to Sipsu. And while she
clapped on the harness, he, with his axe, held the passage between
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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 Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: reformation that I commence. Does m'sieu' permit that I should
inform him of it?"
Of course I permitted, or rather, warmly encouraged, the fullest
possible unfolding of the tale; and while we sat among the bags and
boxes, and the sun settled gently down behind the sharp-pointed firs
across the lake, and the evening sky and the waveless lake glowed
with a thousand tints of deepening rose and amber, Patrick put me in
possession of the facts which had led to a moral revolution in his
life.
"It was the Ma'm'selle Meelair, that young lady,--not very young,
but active like the youngest,--the one that I conducted down the
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