| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: life, and full of wickedness. So on the wedding-day he said to the
dyer, "You have done well to marry, my friend, we shall have a pretty
wife!"; and a thousand sly jokes, such as it is usual to address to a
bridegroom.
In fact, this hunchback courted the dyer's wife, who from her nature,
caring little for badly built people, laughed to scorn the request of
the mechanician, and joked him about the springs, engines, and spools
of which his shop was full. However, this great love of the hunchback
was rebuffed by nothing, and became so irksome to the dyer's wife that
she resolved to cure it by a thousand practical jokes. One evening,
after the sempiternal pursuit, she told her lover to come to the back
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: You put sharp weapons in a madman's hands.
Whiles I in Ireland nourish a mighty band,
I will stir up in England some black storm
Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or hell;
And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage
Until the golden circuit on my head,
Like to the glorious sun's transparent beams,
Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw.
And for a minister of my intent,
I have seduc'd a headstrong Kentishman,
John Cade of Ashford,
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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 Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: thousand government clerks! In fastening upon public offices, like a
mistletoe on a pear-tree, these officials indemnified themselves
amply, and in the following manner.
The ministers, compelled to obey the princes or the Chambers who
impose upon them the distribution of the public moneys, and forced to
retain the workers in office, proceeded to diminish salaries and
increase the number of those workers, thinking that if more persons
were employed by government the stronger the government would be. And
yet the contrary law is an axiom written on the universe; there is no
vigor except where there are few active principles. Events proved in
July, 1830, the error of the materialism of the Restoration. To plant
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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 American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: design.
To these things and a congregation of savages entered suddenly a
wonderful man, completely in the confidence of their God, whom he
treated colloquially and exploited very much as a newspaper
reporter would exploit a foreign potentate. But, unlike the
newspaper reporter, he never allowed his listeners to forget that
he, and not He, was the centre of attraction. With a voice of
silver and with imagery borrowed from the auction-room, he built
up for his hearers a heaven on the lines of the Palmer House (but
with all the gilding real gold, and all the plate-glass diamond),
and set in the centre of it a loud-voiced, argumentative, very
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