| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: deputies who expect a peerage, she may also consider that such conduct
will promote the ambitions of her family. Some women are reserving
their opinion of her until the moment when Monsieur de Listomere
becomes a peer of France, when she herself will be thirty-six years of
age,--a period of life when most women discover that they are the
dupes of social laws.
The marquis is a rather insignificant man. He stands well at court;
his good qualities are as negative as his defects; the former can no
more make him a reputation for virtue than the latter can give him the
sort of glamor cast by vice. As deputy, he never speaks, but he votes
RIGHT. He behaves in his own home as he does in the Chamber.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: preparation, without consolation, without possibility of respite
... Sauve qui peut! Some wrenched down the doors; some clung to
the heavy banquet-tables, to the sofas, to the billiard.
tables:--during one terrible instant,--against fruitless
heroisms, against futile generosities,--raged all the frenzy of
selfishness, all the brutalities of panic. And then--then came,
thundering through the blackness, the giant swells, boom on boom!
... One crash!--the huge frame building rocks like a cradle,
seesaws, crackles. What are human shrieks now?--the tornado is
shrieking! Another!--chandeliers splinter; lights are dashed out;
a sweeping cataract hurls in: the immense hall
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: years, and grasp the mastodon and I tear him
limb from limb,
And with his thigh hone I heat the dinosaur to
death, for I am Virile!
Snore! Snore! Snore!
Snore, O struggling and troubled and squirming
and suffering and choking and purple-faced
sleeper, snore!
Snore me the sound of the brutal struggle when the
big bull planets bellowed and fought with one
another. in the bloody dawn of time for the
|
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 Youth by Joseph Conrad: we shouted. 'I am adrift in our boat without oars,' he
cried. A belated waterman offered his services, and
Mahon struck a bargain with him for half-a-crown to
tow our skipper alongside; but it was Mrs. Beard that
came up the ladder first. They had been floating about
the dock in that mizzly cold rain for nearly an hour. I
was never so surprised in my life.
"It appears that when he heard my shout 'Come up,'
he understood at once what was the matter, caught up
his wife, ran on deck, and across, and down into our boat,
which was fast to the ladder. Not bad for a sixty-year-
Youth |
