| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: exclaimed, "When I see him his danger will inspire me."
She thought, like other ardent souls, to act on the spur of the
moment, trusting to her star, or to that instinct of adroitness which
rarely, if ever, fails a woman. Perhaps her heart was never so wrung.
At times she seemed stupefied, her eyes were fixed, and then, at the
least noise, she shook like a half-uprooted tree which the woodsman
drags with a rope to hasten its fall. Suddenly, a loud report from a
dozen guns echoed from a distance. Marie turned pale and grasped
Francine's hand. "I am dying," she cried; "they have killed him!"
The heavy footfall of a man was heard in the antechamber. Francine
went out and returned with a corporal. The man, making a military
The Chouans |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: motionless with his arms about his knees.
"You got any girls?" said Peter. "Care for niggers?"
"I love all women," said the stranger, refolding his arms about his knees.
"Oh, you do, do you?" said Peter. "Well, I'm pretty sick of them. I had
bother enough with mine," he said genially, warming his hands by the fire,
and then interlocking the fingers and turning the palms towards the blaze
as one who prepares to enjoy a good talk. "One girl was only fifteen; I
got her cheap from a policeman who was living with her, and she wasn't
much. But the other, by Gad! I never saw another nigger like her; well
set up, I tell you, and as straight as that--" said Peter, holding up his
finger in the firelight. "She was thirty if she was a day. Fellows don't
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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 Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: Normandie and Provence. "A la Claire Fontaine," "Dans Paris y a-t-
une Brune plus Belle que le Jour," "Sur le Pont d'Avignon," "En
Roulant ma Boule," "La Poulette Grise," and a hundred other folk-
songs linger among the peasants and voyageurs of these northern
woods. You may hear
"Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre--
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,"
and
"Isabeau s'y promene
Le long de son jardin,"
chanted in the farmhouse or the lumber shanty, to the tunes which
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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 The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: secondly, the Prince William of Orange, as a true Hollander,
had promised to be present at the ceremony of its
inauguration; and, thirdly, it was a point of honour with
the States to show to the French, at the conclusion of such
a disastrous war as that of 1672, that the flooring of the
Batavian Republic was solid enough for its people to dance
on it, with the accompaniment of the cannon of their fleets.
The Horticultural Society of Haarlem had shown itself worthy
of its fame by giving a hundred thousand guilders for the
bulb of a tulip. The town, which did not wish to be outdone,
voted a like sum, which was placed in the hands of that
The Black Tulip |
