| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: tion. Michael and Nicholas laid her on the straw as com-
fortably as possible. The compassionate young man was
greatly moved, and if a tear did not escape from Michael's
eyes, it was because the red-hot iron had dried up the last!
"She is very pretty," said Nicholas.
"Yes," replied Michael.
"They try to be strong, little father, they are brave, but
they are weak after all, these dear little things! Have you
come from far."
"Very far."
"Poor young people! It must have hurt you very much
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: man who lives closest to nature. Toussaint Louverture, after he was
caught, died without speaking a word. Napoleon, transplanted to a
rock, talked like a magpie--he wanted to account for himself. Z.
Marcas erred in the same way, but for our benefit only. Silence in all
its majesty is to be found only in the savage. There is never a
criminal who, though he might let his secrets fall with his head into
the basket of sawdust does not feel the purely social impulse to tell
them to somebody.
Nay, I am wrong. We have seen one Iroquois of the Faubourg Saint-
Marceau who raised the Parisian to the level of the natural savage--a
republican, a conspirator, a Frenchman, an old man, who outdid all we
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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 Charmides by Plato: evidence is required of the genuineness of the one: when they are all
similar in style or motive, like witnesses who agree in the same tale, they
stand or fall together. But no one, not even Mr. Grote, would maintain
that all the Epistles of Plato are genuine, and very few critics think that
more than one of them is so. And they are clearly all written from the
same motive, whether serious or only literary. Nor is there an example in
Greek antiquity of a series of Epistles, continuous and yet coinciding with
a succession of events extending over a great number of years.
The external probability therefore against them is enormous, and the
internal probability is not less: for they are trivial and unmeaning,
devoid of delicacy and subtlety, wanting in a single fine expression. And
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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 Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: "Clark and his party had been at the ranch only a day or two when
one night Hines turned up at Dry River. He wanted the fifty
thousand, or what was left of it, and when he failed to move Henry
he attacked him. The two men on the place heard the noise and ran
in, but Hines got away. Henry swore them to secrecy, and told them
the story. He felt he might need help.
"From what the two men at the ranch told me when I got there, I
think Hines stayed somewhere in the mountains for the next day or
two, and that he came down for food the night Henry died.
"Just what he contributed to Henry's death I do not know. Henry
fell in one room, and was found in bed in another when the hands
The Breaking Point |
