| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: those stupid, half-grown little French boys; and as soon as
you do get one broke into your ways and taught something
he's up and off to the lobster canneries or the States. At
first Matthew suggested getting a Home boy. But I said `no'
flat to that. `They may be all right--I'm not saying
they're not--but no London street Arabs for me,' I said.
`Give me a native born at least. There'll be a risk, no
matter who we get. But I'll feel easier in my mind and
sleep sounder at nights if we get a born Canadian.' So in
the end we decided to ask Mrs. Spencer to pick us out one
when she went over to get her little girl. We heard last
Anne of Green Gables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: the people, she now became aware of instincts within herself which
revolved from all coarseness.
In such a situation she naturally made many a romance such as young
girls are fond of weaving. She clasped the idea--perhaps with the
natural ardor of a noble and virgin imagination--of ennobling one of
those men, and of raising him to the height where her own dreams led
her. She may have made a Paul of some young man who caught her eye,
merely to fasten her wild ideas on an actual being, as the mists of a
damp atmosphere, touched by frost, crystallize on the branches of a
tree by the wayside. She must have flung herself deep into the abysses
of her dream, for though she often returned bearing on her brow, as if
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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 Paz by Honore de Balzac: of balls, at which dancing, joking, coarse fun, excitement, grotesque
figures, and the sharp satire of Parisian wit, produced extravagant
effects. These carnival follies had their special Pandemonium in the
rue Saint-Honore and their Napoleon in Musard, a small man born
expressly to lead an orchestra as noisy as the disorderly audience,
and to set the time for the galop, that witches' dance, which was one
of Auber's triumphs, for it did not really take form or poesy till the
grand galop in "Gustave" was given to the world. That tremendous
finale might serve as the symbol of an epoch in which for the last
fifty years all things have hurried by with the rapidity of a dream.
Now, it happened that the grave Thaddeus, with one divine and
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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 Lysis by Plato: of your favourite, I do not want to hear them; but I want to know the
purport of them, that I may be able to judge of your mode of approaching
your fair one.
Ctesippus will be able to tell you, he said; for if, as he avers, the sound
of my words is always dinning in his ears, he must have a very accurate
knowledge and recollection of them.
Yes, indeed, said Ctesippus; I know only too well; and very ridiculous the
tale is: for although he is a lover, and very devotedly in love, he has
nothing particular to talk about to his beloved which a child might not
say. Now is not that ridiculous? He can only speak of the wealth of
Democrates, which the whole city celebrates, and grandfather Lysis, and the
Lysis |
