| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Koran: number, and they are all coming to Him on the resurrection day singly.
Verily, those who believe and act aright, to them the Merciful
will give love.
We have only made it easy for thy tongue that thou mayest thereby
give glad tidings to the pious, and warn thereby a contentious people.
How many a generation before them have we destroyed? Canst thou find
any one of them, or hear a whisper of them?
THE CHAPTER OF TA HA
(XX. Mecca.)
IN the name of the merciful and compassionate God.
TA HA. We have not sent down this Koran to thee that thou shouldst
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: how she would take things; but shortly afterwards she declared
that he had made a very pretty description and that on the morrow
she would go and see for herself.
They mounted, accordingly, into a great barouche--a vehicle as to
which the Baroness found nothing to criticise but the price that
was asked for it and the fact that the coachman wore a straw hat.
(At Silberstadt Madame Munster had had liveries of yellow
and crimson.) They drove into the country, and the Baroness,
leaning far back and swaying her lace-fringed parasol,
looked to right and to left and surveyed the way-side objects.
After a while she pronounced them "affreux." Her brother
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: by public opinion to form an upper chamber of women, and who will be
among the fair sex what a 'gentleman' is in England."
"And that they call progress!" exclaimed Mademoiselle des Touches. "I
should like to know where the progress lies?"
"Why, in this," said Madame de Nucingen. "Formerly a woman might have
the voice of a fish-seller, the walk of a grenadier, the face of an
impudent courtesan, her hair too high on her forehead, a large foot, a
thick hand--she was a great lady in spite of it all; but in these
days, even if she were a Montmorency--if a Montmorency would ever be
such a creature--she would not be a lady."
"But what do you mean by a 'perfect lady'?" asked Count Adam Laginski.
|
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 Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: at George."
Zeisberger hurried into the other room. Young lay with quiet face and closed
eyes, breathing faintly. Zeisberger opened the wounded man's shirt and exposed
the wound, which was on the right side, rather high up. Nell, who had followed
Zeisberger that she might be of some assistance if needed, saw him look at the
wound and then turn a pale face away for a second. That hurried, shuddering
movement of the sober, practical missionary was most significant. Then he bent
over Young and inserted on of the probes into the wound. He pushed the steel
an inch, two, three, four inches into Young's breast, but the latter neither
moved nor moaned. Zeisberger shook his head, and finally removed the
instrument. He raised the sufferer's shoulder to find the bed saturated with
The Spirit of the Border |
