| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: once tell it the boy likewise, in hope that he might help his
generation to mend that which my own generation does not seem like
to mend.
I might have said more to him: but did not. For it is not well
to destroy too early the child's illusion, that people must be
wise because they are grown up, and have votes, and rule--or think
they rule--the world. The child will find out how true that is
soon enough for himself. If the truth be forced on him by the hot
words of those with whom he lives, it is apt to breed in him that
contempt, stormful and therefore barren, which makes revolutions;
and not that pity, calm and therefore helpful, which makes
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: words, to "feebly fabulate and paddle in the social slush."
It seemed to him, I think, that society is precisely the
reverse of friendship, in that it takes place on a lower
level than the characters of any of the parties would warrant
us to expect. The society talk of even the most brilliant
man is of greatly less account than what you will get from
him in (as the French say) a little committee. And Thoreau
wanted geniality; he had not enough of the superficial, even
at command; he could not swoop into a parlour and, in the
naval phrase, "cut out" a human being from that dreary port;
nor had he inclination for the task. I suspect he loved
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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 Voice of the City by O. Henry: Paul Jones, or to pen a testimonial to a hay-fever
cure.
Therefore, let it be known that the description of
Vuyning's apparel is germane to the movements of
the story, and not to make room for the new fall
stock of goods.
Even Broadway that morning was a discord in
Vuyning's ears; and in his eyes it paralleled for a
few dreamy, dreary minutes a certain howling,
scorching, seething, malodorous slice of street that he
remembered in Morocco. He saw the struggling
The Voice of the City |
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 Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: white, of swans and lilies, signifying /candidior candidis/--more
white than the whitest--the motto of the queen whose name began, like
that of Catherine, with a C, and which applied as well to the daughter
of Louis XII. as to the mother of the last Valois; for no suspicion,
in spite of the violence of Calvinist calumny, has tarnished the
fidelity of Catherine de' Medici to Henri II.
The queen-mother, still charged with the care of two young children
(him who was afterward Duc d'Alencon, and Marguerite, the wife of
Henri IV., the sister whom Charles IX. called Margot), had need of the
whole of the first upper floor.
The king, Francois II., and the queen, Mary Stuart, occupied, on the
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