| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning and quivering about them;
and the river, brighter than all, fell, in a waving column of pure
gold, from precipice to precipice, with the double arch of a broad
purple rainbow stretched across it, flushing and fading alternately
in the wreaths of spray.
"Ah!" said Gluck aloud, after he had looked at it for a
little while, "if that river were really all gold, what a nice
thing it would be."
"No, it wouldn't, Gluck," said a clear, metallic voice close
at his ear.
"Bless me, what's that?" exclaimed Gluck, jumping up. There
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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 Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: really a countess,--will no doubt pay me when she is dead; and so I've
lent her all I had. And now I haven't anything; all I did have has
gone to the pawn-brokers. She owes me forty-seven francs and twelve
sous, beside thirty francs for the nursing. She wants to kill herself
with charcoal. I tell her it ain't right; and, indeed, I've had to get
the concierge to look after her while I'm gone, or she's likely to
jump out of the window."
"But what's the matter with her?" said Joseph.
"Ah! monsieur, the doctor from the Sisters' hospital came; but as to
the disease," said Madame Gruget, assuming a modest air, "he told me
she must go to the hospital. The case is hopeless."
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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 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: which may be represented by 3^2.
Upon this, my Grandson, again returning to his former suggestion,
took me up rather suddenly and exclaimed, "Well, then,
if a Point by moving three inches, makes a Line of three inches
represented by 3; and if a straight Line of three inches,
moving parallel to itself, makes a Square of three inches every way,
represented by 3^2; it must be that a Square of three inches
every way, moving somehow parallel to itself (but I don't see how)
must make Something else (but I don't see what) of three inches
every way -- and this must be represented by 3^3."
"Go to bed," said I, a little ruffled by this interruption:
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
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 The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: empires might be decided in battle, which the farmer
will despise as bleak and barren, neither fruitful of
pasturage, nor fit for tillage[n]."
[n] Livy has described the Achaean leader, Philopaemen, as
actually so exercising his thoughts whilst he wandered among the
rocky passes of the Morea, xxxv. 28. In the graphic page of the
Roman historian, as in the stanzas of the "Ariosto of the North:"
"From shingles grey the lances start,
"The bracken bush sends forth the dart,
"The rushes and the willow wand
"Are bristling into axe and brand."
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