| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: tradesmen.
"I don't see any one suitable for her in Saumur," said Madame Grandet,
glancing at her husband with a timid look which, considering her
years, revealed the conjugal slavery under which the poor woman
languished.
Grandet looked at his daughter and exclaimed gaily,--
"She is twenty-three years old to-day, the child; we must soon begin
to think of it."
Eugenie and her mother silently exchanged a glance of intelligence.
Madame Grandet was a dry, thin woman, as yellow as a quince, awkward,
slow, one of those women who are born to be down-trodden. She had big
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: crew, but none was captured. Either there were some secret
hiding places upon the island (which was not very likely) or else
they had escaped in boats hidden somewhere among the tropical
foliage. At any rate they were gone.
Nor, search as he would, could Mainwaring find a trace of any of
the pirate treasure. After the pirate's death and under close
questioning, the weeping mulatto woman so far broke down as to
confess in broken English that Captain Scarfield had taken a
quantity of silver money aboard his vessel, but either she was
mistaken or else the pirates had taken it thence again and had
hidden it somewhere else.
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: hour), and he would develop to its highest the conception of Philip,
when he made Aristotle the tutor of his son Alexander. The consequences
of that attempt were written in letters of blood, over half the world;
Ptolemy would attempt it once more, with gentler results. For though he
fought long, and often, and well, as Despot of Egypt, no less than as
general of Alexander, he was not at heart a man of blood, and made peace
the end of all his wars.
So he begins. Aristotle is gone: but in Aristotle's place Philetas the
sweet singer of Cos, and Zenodotus the grammarian of Ephesus, shall
educate his favourite son, and he will have a literary court, and a
literary age. Demetrius Phalereus, the Admirable Crichton of his time,
|
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 Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: the outward world to be endowed with volition, and to be
directed by it. They personified everything,--sky, clouds,
thunder, sun, moon, ocean, earthquake, whirlwind.[9] The
comparatively enlightened Athenians of the age of Perikles
addressed the sky as a person, and prayed to it to rain upon
their gardens.[10] And for calling the moon a mass of dead
matter, Anaxagoras came near losing his life. To the ancients
the moon was not a lifeless ball of stones and clods: it was
the horned huntress, Artemis, coursing through the upper
ether, or bathing herself in the clear lake; or it was
Aphrodite, protectress of lovers, born of the sea-foam in the
Myths and Myth-Makers |
