| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: are persons that are likely to postpone such a meeting. Permit
me to say, that were it generally known that you or my Lady
Forester are apprehensive of such a catastrophe, it might be the
very means of bringing about what would not otherwise be likely
to happen. I know your good sense, Lady Bothwell, and that you
will understand me when I say that really my affairs require my
absence for some months. This Jemima cannot understand. It is a
perpetual recurrence of questions, why can you not do this, or
that, or the third thing? and, when you have proved to her that
her expedients are totally ineffectual, you have just to begin
the whole round again. Now, do you tell her, dear Lady Bothwell,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: about the crowning misfortune of Madame du Bousquier's life. His heart
was set on undeceiving her pious simplicity; for the chevalier, expert
in love, divined du Bousquier, the married man, as he had divined du
Bousquier, the bachelor. But the wary republican was difficult of
attack. His salon was, of course, closed to the Chevalier de Valois,
as to all those who, in the early days of his marriage, had slighted
the Cormon mansion. He was, moreover, impervious to ridicule; he
possessed a vast fortune; he reigned in Alencon; he cared as little
for his wife as Richard III. cared for the dead horse which had helped
him win a battle. To please her husband, Madame du Bousquier had
broken off relations with the d'Esgrignon household, where she went no
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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 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody
else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed
of his race to think of the sort of froth that has
always occupied its thrones without shadow of right
or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always
figured as its aristocracies -- a company of monarchs
and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only
poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their
own exertions.
The most of King Arthur's British nation were
slaves, pure and simple, and bore that name, and wore
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
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 Chance by Joseph Conrad: your room, papa!"
Anthony himself threw open the door and Flora took care to shut it
carefully behind herself and her father. "See," she began but
desisted because it was clear that he would look at none of the
contrivances for his comfort. She herself had hardly seen them
before. He was looking only at the new carpet and she waited till
he should raise his eyes.
He didn't do that but spoke in his usual voice. "So this is your
husband, that . . . And I locked up!"
"Papa, what's the good of harping on that," she remonstrated no
louder. "He is kind."
Chance |
