| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: agreement for six thousand francs more, to be paid to you on your
return, provided you have carried out the conditions of the bargain.
For that price you are to keep perfect silence as to what you have to
do this night. To you, Rosalie, I will secure ten thousand francs,
which will not be paid to you till your wedding day, and on condition
of your marrying Gorenflot; but, to get married, you must hold your
tongue. If not, no wedding gift!'
" 'Rosalie,' said Madame de Merret, 'come and brush my hair.'
"Her husband quietly walked up and down the room, keeping an eye on
the door, on the mason, and on his wife, but without any insulting
display of suspicion. Gorenflot could not help making some noise.
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: and that to amend that was the repentance which God demanded.
Yet we cannot blame them. They showed that the crowded city life
can bring out human nobleness as well as human baseness; that to
be crushed into contact with their fellow-men, forced at least the
loftier and tender souls to know their fellow-men, and therefore
to care for them, to love them, to die for them. Yes--from one
temptation the city life is free, to which the country life is
sadly exposed--that isolation which, self-contented and self-
helping, forgets in its surly independence that man is his
brother's keeper. In cities, on the contrary, we find that the
stories of these old pestilences, when the first panic terror has
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: me - 'If they could see me now!' meaning, of course, my friends at
home; and the idea of how they would pity me has made me pity
myself - so greatly that I have had the utmost difficulty to
restrain my tears: but I have restrained them, till my little
tormentors were gone to dessert, or cleared off to bed (my only
prospects of deliverance), and then, in all the bliss of solitude,
I have given myself up to the luxury of an unrestricted burst of
weeping. But this was a weakness I did not often indulge: my
employments were too numerous, my leisure moments too precious, to
admit of much time being given to fruitless lamentations.
I particularly remember one wild, snowy afternoon, soon after my
Agnes Grey |
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 The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: You'll have me laughing soon.
I'm calm as this Atlantic,
And quiet as the moon;
I may have spoken faster
Than once, in other days;
For I've no more a master,
And now -- `Be calm,' he says.
"Fear not, fear no commotion, --
I'll be as rocks and sand;
The moon and stars and ocean
Will envy my command;
|
