| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: which engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen
into profound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them;
no one would have dared to recall them.
M. Myriel had arrived at D---- accompanied by an elderly spinster,
Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.
Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age
as Mademoiselle Baptistine, and named Madame Magloire, who,
after having been the servant of M. le Cure, now assumed
the double title of maid to Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.
Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature;
she realized the ideal expressed by the word "respectable"; for it
Les Miserables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic: regard it as a very unnecessary operation.
"It would be a good plan; and while you are about it you must not
forget your face."
"I ain't a-going to touch the candy with my face," added Ann,
triumphantly
"Very true; but if people saw you with such a dirty face, they
would be afraid your candy was not very clean."
"Any way you like. I will wash my face and hands both, if that's
all."
"But that isn't all. Your dress is very dirty and very ragged."
"I can't afford to dress like a lady," said Ann, who had some of
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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 The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: preferred such amusements, were in readiness; but the exercise of
the morning required early hours, and not long after eleven
o'clock the guests began to retire to their several apartments.
The young lord himself conducted his friend, General Browne, to
the chamber destined for him, which answered the description he
had given of it, being comfortable, but old-fashioned, The bed
was of the massive form used in the end of the seventeenth
century, and the curtains of faded silk, heavily trimmed with
tarnished gold. But then the sheets, pillows, and blankets
looked delightful to the campaigner, when he thought of his
"mansion, the cask." There was an air of gloom in the tapestry
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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 Juana by Honore de Balzac: knew nothing of the vices, the meannesses, or the resources of
Parisian society; she looked at that society with the curiosity of a
girl, but she learned from it only that which her sorrow and her
wounded pride revealed to her.
Juana had the tact of a virgin heart which receives impressions in
advance of the event, after the manner of what are called
"sensitives." The solitary young girl, so suddenly become a woman and
a wife, saw plainly that were she to attempt to compel society to
respect her husband, it must be after the manner of Spanish beggars,
carbine in hand. Besides, the multiplicity of the precautions she
would have to take, would they meet the necessity? Suddenly she
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