| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: their distress.
Think, then, and some day, I believe, you will feel also,--no morbid
passion of pity such as would turn you into a black Sister of
Charity, but the steady fire of perpetual kindness which will make
you a bright one. I speak in no disparagement of them; I know well
how good the Sisters of Charity are, and how much we owe to them;
but all these professional pieties (except so far as distinction or
association may be necessary for effectiveness of work) are in their
spirit wrong, and in practice merely plaster the sores of disease
that ought never to have been permitted to exist; encouraging at the
same time the herd of less excellent women in frivolity, by leading
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: substantive jewels, in a setting of their own.
One or two of these pleasant spectres I think I have laid. I used
one but the other day: a little eyot of dense, freshwater sand,
where I once waded deep in butterburrs, delighting to hear the song
of the river on both sides, and to tell myself that I was indeed
and at last upon an island. Two of my puppets lay there a summer's
day, hearkening to the shearers at work in riverside fields and to
the drums of the gray old garrison upon the neighbouring hill. And
this was, I think, done rightly: the place was rightly peopled -
and now belongs not to me but to my puppets - for a time at least.
In time, perhaps, the puppets will grow faint; the original memory
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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 Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: citizens; and no one is allowed to do justice for himself."
"He has made himself the head of a singular nation," said Bartolomeo,
taking Lucien's hand and pressing it. "But you have both recognized me
in misfortune, and I am yours, henceforth, for life or death. You may
dispose as you will of the Piombos."
With these words his Corsican brow unbent, and he looked about him in
satisfaction.
"You are not badly off here," he said, smiling, as if he meant to
lodge there himself. "You are all in red, like a cardinal."
"Your success depends upon yourself; you can have a palace, also,"
said Bonaparte, watching his compatriot with a keen eye. "It will
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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 Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: dust and cobwebs. In health he had been a man of refined and expensive
tastes, now he positively delighted in the comfortless look of the
room. A host of objects required in illness--rows of medicine bottles,
empty and full, most of them dirty, crumpled linen, and broken plates,
littered the writing-table, chairs, and chimney-piece. An open
warming-pan lay on the floor before the grate; a bath, still full of
mineral water had not been taken away. The sense of coming dissolution
pervaded all the details of an unsightly chaos. Signs of death
appeared in things inanimate before the Destroyer came to the body on
the bed. The Comte de Restaud could not bear the daylight, the
Venetian shutters were closed, darkness deepened the gloom in the
Gobseck |
