| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: man! so much the better! Don't try to understand it -- you
will only lose your time."
"You forgive me, then, sir," said Raoul, "and you will deign
to tell me who is the person that you call the young
Indian?"
"Certainly; one of the most charming persons that lives --
Mademoiselle Frances d'Aubigne."
"Does she belong to the family of the celebrated Agrippa,
the friend of Henry IV.?"
"His granddaughter. She comes from Martinique, so I call her
the beautiful Indian."
Twenty Years After |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: a fine lad. An' he died in Phoenix. We tried to get him out here. But the
boy wouldn't live on charity. He was always expectin' money--a war bonus,
whatever that was. It didn't come. He was a clerk at the El Tovar for a
while. Then he came to Flagstaff. But it was too cold an' he stayed there
too long."
"Too bad," rejoined Carley, thoughtfully. This information as to the
suffering of American soldiers had augmented during the last few months,
and seemed to possess strange, poignant power to depress Carley. Always she
had turned away from the unpleasant. And the misery of unfortunates was as
disturbing almost as direct contact with disease and squalor. But it had
begun to dawn upon Carley that there might occur circumstances of life, in
The Call of the Canyon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: that at no period of her life had she ever been so desirable or so
completely a woman. She was now at an age when women are most prone to
conceive a passion, and to desire it, perhaps, in their pensive hours.
She possessed all that earth sells, all that it lends, all that it
gives. The Attaches declared there was nothing of which she was
ignorant; the Contradictors asserted that there was much she ought to
learn; the Observers remarked that her hands were white, her feet
small, her movements a trifle too undulating. But, nevertheless,
individuals of all species envied or disputed Octave's happiness,
agreeing, for once in a way, that Madame Firmiani was the most
aristocratically beautiful woman in Paris.
|
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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: but it has occurred to me now and then to dredge specimens of C.
aculeatum, which had escaped that rolling on the sand fatal in old
age to its delicate spines, and which equalled in colour, size, and
perfectness the noble one figured in poor dear old Dr. Turton's
"British Bivalves." Besides, aculeatum is a far thinner and more
delicate shell. And a third species, C. echinatum, with curves
more graceful and continuous, is to be found now and then with the
two former. In it, each point, instead of degenerating into a
knot, as in tuberculatum, or developing from delicate flat briar-
prickles into long straight thorns, as in aculeatum, is close-set
to its fellow, and curved at the point transversely to the shell,
|
