| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: somewhat out of tune.
"That's right," grinned the Rough Red savagely, "keep her up. If
you quit before I get back to work, I'll come back and take you
apart."
They waded through the shallow water in the cornfield. After them
wafted the rather disorganised strains of WHOA, EMMA. Captain
Simpson was indulging in what resembled heat apoplexy. After a time
the LUCY BELLE'S crew recovered their scattered wits sufficiently to
transport the passengers in small boats to a point near the county
road, whence all trudged to town. The LUCY BELLE grew in the
cornfield until several weeks later, when time was found to pull her
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: two which appear without ceasing in his Correspondence, under one
form or another, and these are the ones which are most strongly
evident in the art of De Maupassant. We now see the consequences
which were inevitable by reason of them, endowed as Maupassant
was with a double power of feeling life bitterly, and at the same
time with so much of animal force. The first theory bears upon
the choice of personages and the story of the romance, the second
upon the character of the style. The son of a physician, and
brought up in the rigors of scientific method, Flaubert believed
this method to be efficacious in art as in science. For instance,
in the writing of a romance, he seemed to be as scientific as in
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: knowing Adelaide, their lives were one life. From early morning
the young girl, hearing footsteps overhead, could say to herself,
"He is there." When Hippolyte went home to his mother at the
dinner hour he never failed to look in on his neighbors, and in
the evening he flew there at the accustomed hour with a lover's
punctuality. Thus the most tyrannical woman or the most ambitious
in the matter of love could not have found the smallest fault
with the young painter. And Adelaide tasted of unmixed and
unbounded happiness as she saw the fullest realization of the
ideal of which, at her age, it is so natural to dream.
The old gentleman now came more rarely; Hippolyte, who had been
|
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 Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: always, as heretofore, be the natural right of the distinguished
men of the third estate.
These new notions of the head of the Fontaines, and the prudent
matches for his eldest girls to which they had led, met with strong
resistance in the bosom of his family. The Comtesse de Fontaine
remained faithful to the ancient beliefs which no woman could disown,
who, through her mother, belonged to the Rohans. Although she had for
a while opposed the happiness and fortune awaiting her two eldest
girls, she yielded to those private considerations which husband and
wife confide to each other when their heads are resting on the same
pillow. Monsieur de Fontaine calmly pointed out to his wife, by exact
|
