| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: "Oh! if only your father had ever spoken so----!" cried the Baroness.
Hortense threw her arms round her husband's neck.
"Yes, that is what I should have done," said her mother. "Wenceslas,
my dear fellow, your wife was near dying of it," she went on very
seriously. "You see how well she loves you. And, alas--she is yours!"
She sighed deeply.
"He may make a martyr of her, or a happy woman," thought she to
herself, as every mother thinks when she sees her daughter married.--
"It seems to me," she said aloud, "that I am miserable enough to hope
to see my children happy."
"Be quite easy, dear mamma," said Wenceslas, only too glad to see this
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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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: shaking her head, her silence would throw me more heavily than the
Admirable Crichton could have done in a verbal disputation for a
purse of money. Cook, likewise, always covered me with confusion
as with a garment, by neatly winding up the session with the
protest that the Ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly repeating
her last wishes regarding her silver watch.
As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and fear was
among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. Hooded
woman? According to the accounts, we were in a perfect Convent of
hooded women. Noises? With that contagion downstairs, I myself
have sat in the dismal parlor, listening, until I have heard so
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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 Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: Jesus said that her sins were forgiven her, not because she
repented, but because her love was so intense and wonderful. Later
on, a short time before his death, as he sat at a feast, the woman
came in and poured costly perfumes on his hair. His friends tried
to interfere with her, and said that it was an extravagance, and
that the money that the perfume cost should have been expended on
charitable relief of people in want, or something of that kind.
Jesus did not accept that view. He pointed out that the material
needs of Man were great and very permanent, but that the spiritual
needs of Man were greater still, and that in one divine moment, and
by selecting its own mode of expression, a personality might make
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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 Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: him. "Vanish. Clear out."
"Where to?" snarled Mr Verloc. He raised his head, and gazing at
the closed door of the parlour, muttered feelingly: "I only wish
you would take me away to-night. I would go quietly."
"I daresay," assented sardonically the Chief Inspector, following
the direction of his glance.
The brow of Mr Verloc broke into slight moisture. He lowered his
husky voice confidentially before the unmoved Chief Inspector.
"The lad was half-witted, irresponsible. Any court would have seen
that at once. Only fit for the asylum. And that was the worst
that would've happened to him if - "
The Secret Agent |
