| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: "M. le Baron de Nueil."
Gaston came in slowly, but with sufficient ease of manner; and it is a
more difficult thing, be it said, to enter a room where there is but
one woman, than a room that holds a score.
A great fire was burning on the hearth in spite of the mild weather,
and by the soft light of the candles in the sconces he saw a young
woman sitting on a high-backed /bergere/ in the angle by the hearth.
The seat was so low that she could move her head freely; every turn of
it was full of grace and delicate charm, whether she bent, leaning
forward, or raised and held it erect, slowly and languidly, as though
it were a heavy burden, so low that she could cross her feet and let
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: His sister at the old book-shop exasperated him nowadays
to a degree which often provoked within him the resolution
to have done with her. He had a score of projects for
her betterment, each capable of as many variations and eager
adaptations to suit her fancy, but to them all and sundry she
opposed a barrier of stupidly passive negation. There was
nothing she wanted done for her. She would not exchange
the work she had been brought up in for a life of idleness.
She did not want, and would not know what to do with,
a bigger shop than she had. An augmentation of her capital
would be of no use, because there was no room in the
The Market-Place |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: In the icy stream of the rivers he waded over the knees;
And still in his empty mind crowded, a thousand-fold,
The deeds of the strong and the songs of the cunning heroes of old.
And now was he come to a place Taiarapu honoured the most,
Where a silent valley of woods debouched on the noisy coast,
Spewing a level river. There was a haunt of Pai. (2)
There, in his potent youth, when his parents drove him to die,
Honoura lived like a beast, lacking the lamp and the fire,
Washed by the rains of the trade and clotting his hair in the mire;
And there, so mighty his hands, he bent the tree to his foot -
So keen the spur of his hunger, he plucked it naked of fruit.
Ballads |
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 What is Man? by Mark Twain: irreverence no longer, because I will not allow it. The first
time those criminals charge me with irreverence for calling their
Stratford myth an Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-
the-Seventeenth-Veiled-Prophet-of-Khorassan will be the last.
Taught by the methods found effective in extinguishing earlier
offenders by the Inquisition, of holy memory, I shall know how to
quiet them.
XIII
Isn't it odd, when you think of it, that you may list all
the celebrated Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern
times, clear back to the first Tudors--a list containing five
What is Man? |
