| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: He called up all the girls and boys--
"And they all ran to hear him play,
"Over the hills and far away!--"
Suddenly a little smothered voice
chimed in--
"Over the hills and a great way off,
The wind shall blow my top knot
off."
Pigling Bland put down a plate
which he was wiping, and listened.
After a long pause, Pigling went
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus; and their gorgeous reveries were
welcomed eagerly by the European mind, just revelling in the free
thought of youthful manhood. And yet the Alexandrian impotence for any
practical and social purposes was to be manifested, as utterly as it was
in Alexandria or in Athens of old. Ficinus and Picus of Mirandola
worked no deliverance, either for Italian morals or polity, at a time
when such deliverance was needed bitterly enough. Neoplatonism was
petted by luxurious and heathen popes, as an elegant play of the
cultivated fancy, which could do their real power, their practical
system, neither good nor harm. And one cannot help feeling, while
reading the magnificent oration on Supra-sensual Love, which
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: with clear and penetrating eyes: Eugenie, remembering that prophetic
death, that prophetic life, measured with one glance her own destiny.
Nothing was left for her; she could only unfold her wings, stretch
upward to the skies, and live in prayer until the day of her
deliverance.
"My mother was right," she said, weeping. "Suffer--and die!"
XIV
Eugenie came slowly back from the garden to the house, and avoided
passing, as was her custom, through the corridor. But the memory of
her cousin was in the gray old hall and on the chimney-piece, where
stood a certain saucer and the old Sevres sugar-bowl which she used
Eugenie Grandet |
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 Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and
her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get,
though there is was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.
The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who
had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that
they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her
except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he
got her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and the
kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying
for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but I
can picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, slamming
Peter Pan |
