| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: Nevertheless, Nathan maintains his ground by the quickness of his
mind, by those lucky hits which billiard-players call a "good stroke."
He is the cleverest shot at ideas on the fly in all Paris. His
fecundity is not his own, but that of his epoch; he lives on chance
events, and to control them he distorts their meaning. In short, he is
not TRUE; his presentation is false; in him, as Comte Felix said, is
the born juggler. Moreover, his pen gets its ink in the boudoir of an
actress.
Raoul Nathan is a fair type of the Parisian literary youth of the day,
with its false grandeurs and its real misery. He represents that youth
by his incomplete beauties and his headlong falls, by the turbulent
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: now?'
'My dear fellow,' said Macfarlane, 'what a boy you are! What
harm HAS come to you? What harm CAN come to you if you hold
your tongue? Why, man, do you know what this life is? There
are two squads of us - the lions and the lambs. If you're a
lamb, you'll come to lie upon these tables like Gray or Jane
Galbraith; if you're a lion, you'll live and drive a horse
like me, like K-, like all the world with any wit or courage.
You're staggered at the first. But look at K-! My dear
fellow, you're clever, you have pluck. I like you, and K-
likes you. You were born to lead the hunt; and I tell you,
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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 Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they
are wisest. They are the magi.
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE GIFT OF THE MAGI.
The Gift of the Magi |
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 Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: the Loire meets, in a southern temperament, with the guile of the
North, the character is complete, and such a man will gain (and
keep) the crown of Sweden.
Rastignac, therefore, could not stand the fire from Vautrin's
batteries for long without discovering whether this was a friend
or a foe. He felt as if this strange being was reading his inmost
soul, and dissecting his feelings, while Vautrin himself was so
close and secretive that he seemed to have something of the
profound and unmoved serenity of a sphinx, seeing and hearing all
things and saying nothing. Eugene, conscious of that money in his
pocket, grew rebellious.
Father Goriot |
