| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: that he had persuaded his aunt where his uncle could do nothing,
and on her laughing and noticing it, he owned that he believed (excepting
one or two points) he could with time persuade her to any thing.
One of those points on which his influence failed, he then mentioned.
He had wanted very much to go abroad--had been very eager indeed
to be allowed to travel--but she would not hear of it. This had
happened the year before. Now, he said, he was beginning to have
no longer the same wish.
The unpersuadable point, which he did not mention, Emma guessed
to be good behaviour to his father.
"I have made a most wretched discovery," said he, after a short pause.--
Emma |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: (Murel was sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment); so many
people who were supposed to be honest, and bore a respectable
name in the different States, were found to be among the list
of the Grand Council as published by Stewart, that every attempt
was made to throw discredit upon his assertions--his character
was vilified, and more than one attempt was made to assassinate him.
He was obliged to quit the Southern States in consequence.
It is, however, now well ascertained to have been all true;
and although some blame Mr. Stewart for having violated his oath,
they no longer attempt to deny that his revelations were correct.
I will quote one or two portions of Murel's confessions to
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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 Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: even that treachery to her purpose: the very circumstances that
had forced her to give him up made it weak cowardice to turn
again. It was a simple story, yet one which she dared not tell
to herself; for it was not altogether for her father's sake she
had made the sacrifice. She knew, that, though she might be near
to this man Holmes as his own soul, she was a clog on him,--stood
in his way,--kept him back. So she had quietly stood aside,
taken up her own solitary burden, and left him with his clear
self-reliant life,--with his Self, dearer to him than she had
ever been. Why should it not be dearer? She
thought,--remembering the man as he was, a master among men: fit
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: instinctively have felt for each other that friendship of man to man,
which is so rarely to be met in this life. Appointed sub-lieutenant of
dragoons, at the age of eighteen, the young Comte de Dey had obeyed
the point of honor of the period by following the princes of the blood
in their emigration.
Thus Madame de Dey, noble, rich, and the mother of an emigre, could
not be unaware of the dangers of her cruel situation. Having no other
desire than to preserve a fortune for her son, she renounced the
happiness of emigrating with him; and when she read the vigorous laws
by virtue of which the Republic daily confiscated the property of
emigres, she congratulated herself on that act of courage; was she not
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