| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: Horning their husbands that had horns before.
And the same author writes concerning the Cantharus, that which you
shall also hear in his own words:
But, contrary, the constant Cantharus
Is ever constant to his faithful spouse
In nuptial duties, spending his chaste life.
Never loves any but his own dear wife.
Sir, but a little longer, and I have done.
Venator. Sir, take what liberty you think fit, for your discourse seems to
be musick, and charms me to an attention.
Piscator. Why then, Sir, I will take a little liberty to tell, or rather to
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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 Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: all following him; but all the time there was a great turmoil
of thoughts within his head, tumbling one over the other.
And thus ends the merry tale of Little John and how he entered
the Sheriff's service.
Little John and the Tanner of Blyth
ONE FINE DAY, not long after Little John had left abiding with the Sheriff
and had come back, with his worship's cook, to the merry greenwood,
as has just been told, Robin Hood and a few chosen fellows of his band
lay upon the soft sward beneath the greenwood tree where they dwelled.
The day was warm and sultry, so that while most of the band were
scattered through the forest upon this mission and upon that,
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: things on the outside have nothing within. But if we reflect on the
small number of actors and actresses who live in each century, and
also on how many dramatic authors and fascinating women this
population has supplied relatively to its numbers, it is allowable to
refute that opinion, which rests, and apparently will rest forever, on
a criticism made against dramatic artists,--namely, that their
personal sentiments are destroyed by the plastic presentation of
passions; whereas, in fact, they put into their art only their gifts
of mind, memory, and imagination. Great artists are beings who, to
quote Napoleon, can cut off at will the connection which Nature has
put between the senses and thought. Moliere and Talma, in their old
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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 On Revenues by Xenophon: I would premise that I claim no sort of admiration for anything which
I am about to say, as though I had hit upon some recondite discovery.
Since half of what I have to say is at the present moment still patent
to the eyes of all of us, and as to what belongs to past history, if
we are to believe the testimony of our fathers,[10] things were then
much of a piece with what is going on now. No, what is really
marvellous is that the state, with the fact of so many private persons
growing wealthy at her expense, and under her very eyes, should have
failed to imitate them. It is an old story, trite enough to those of
us who have cared to attend to it, how once on a time Nicias, the son
of Niceratus, owned a thousand men in the silver mines,[11] whom he
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