| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: the rest of the trade by six weeks with that elastic-top gusset."
"Inspiration working, Emma?" T. A. Buck would ask, noting the
symptoms.
"It isn't inspiration, T. A. Nothing of the kind! It's just an
attack of imagination, complicated by clothes-instinct."
"That's all that ails Poiret," Buck would retort.
Early in the autumn, when women were still walking with an absurd
sidewise gait, like a duck, or a filly that is too tightly
hobbled, the junior partner of the firm began to show
unmistakable signs of business aberration. A blight seemed to
have fallen upon her bright little office, usually humming with
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: can meditate at your leisure; it is the very thing to make time pass
agreeably in the country."
"That suits me," said the lunatic.
"It only costs a trifle,--eighty francs."
"That won't suit me," said the lunatic.
"Monsieur!" cried Gaudissart, "of course you have got grandchildren?
There's the 'Children's Journal'; that only costs seven francs a
year."
"Very good; take my wine, and I will subscribe to the children. That
suits me very well: a fine idea! intellectual product, child. That's
man living upon man, hein?"
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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 A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: deserving,
For it, with the wisest, the Master is serving.
I
Nobody hates me more than I;
No enemy have I to-day
That I so bravely must defy;
There are no foes along my way,
However bitter they may be,
So powerful to injure me
As I am, nor as quick to spoil
The beauty of my bit of toil.
A Heap O' Livin' |
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 Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: antique world. In the course of ages the intellect began to work on
special lines, but the great man still could "take all knowledge for
his province." A man "full cautelous," as was said of Louis XI., for
instance, could apply that special faculty in every direction, but
to-day the single quality is subdivided, and every profession has its
special craft. A peasant or a pettifogging solicitor might very easily
overreach an astute diplomate over a bargain in some remote country
village; and the wiliest journalist may prove the veriest simpleton in
a piece of business. Lucien could but be a puppet in the hands of
Petit-Claud.
That guileful practitioner, as might have been expected, had written
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