| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: "We've got him!" yelled Hiram. "Don't move--step on his nose if he gets too
close."
Then I saw the halter had come off the bear and had fallen to the ground.
Hiram picked it up, arranged the noose, and, holding it in his teeth began
to limb after the bear. Cubby was now only a few feet under me, working
steadily up, growling, and his little eyes were like points of green fire.
"Stop him! Stand on his head!" mumbled Hiram, with the rope in his teeth.
"What!--not on your life!"
But, reaching up, I grasped a branch, and, swinging clear of the lower one,
I began to kick at the bear. This stopped him. Then he squealed, and began
to kick on his own account. Hiram was trying to get the noose over a bind
The Young Forester |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: more frequently charming than beautiful. These two appeared
to have attained the culminating point of a discussion --
half-bantering, half-serious.
"Now, Monsieur Malicorne," said the young girl, "does it, at
length, please you that we should talk reasonably?"
"You believe that that is very easy, Mademoiselle Aure,"
replied the young man. "To do what we like, when we can only
do what we are able ---- "
"Good! there he is bewildered in his phrases."
"Who, I?"
"Yes, you quit that lawyer's logic, my dear."
Ten Years Later |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: into the sunshine, which he seemed to dislike so much.
One morning Ford found him sitting on the floor of the verandah,
his back against the wall, his legs stretched stiffly out, his
arms hanging by his side. His expressionless face, his eyes open
wide with immobile pupils, and the rigidity of his pose, made him
look like an immense man-doll broken and flung there out of the
way. As Ford came up the steps he turned his head slowly.
"Ford," he murmured from the floor, "I cannot forget."
"Can't you?" said Ford, innocently, with an attempt at joviality:
"I wish I was like you. I am losing my memory--age, I suppose;
only the other day my mate--"
Almayer's Folly |
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 Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: can readily see that the Baron di Piombo must have been a man of stern
integrity. He owed his plumage as baron to the necessity Napoleon felt
of giving him a title before sending him on missions to foreign
courts.
Bartolomeo had always professed a hatred to the traitors with whom
Napoleon surrounded himself, expecting to bind them to his cause by
dint of victories. It was he of whom it is told that he made three
steps to the door of the Emperor's cabinet after advising him to get
rid of three men in France on the eve of Napoleon's departure for his
celebrated and admirable campaign of 1814. After the second return of
the Bourbons Bartolomeo ceased to wear the decoration of the Legion of
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