| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: with her death. The prefect was the father of her second son Emile;
the whole town knew this, old Blondet himself knew it. The wife who
might have roused her husband's ambition, who might have won him away
from his flowers, positively encouraged the judge in his botanical
tastes. She no more cared to leave the place than the prefect cared to
leave his prefecture so long as his mistress lived.
Blondet felt himself unequal at his age to a contest with a young
wife. He sought consolation in his greenhouse, and engaged a very
pretty servant-maid to assist him to tend his ever-changing bevy of
beauties. So while the judge potted, pricked out, watered, layered,
slipped, blended, and induced his flowers to break, Mme. Blondet spent
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: happy in doing thy dear will; but to another, fy!"
"Forgive me, my own Gillette," said the painter, throwing himself at
her feet. "I would rather be loved than famous. To me thou art more
precious than fortune and honors. Yes, away with these brushes! burn
those sketches! I have been mistaken. My vocation is to love thee,--
thee alone! I am not a painter, I am thy lover. Perish art and all its
secrets!"
She looked at him admiringly, happy and captivated by his passion. She
reigned; she felt instinctively that the arts were forgotten for her
sake, and flung at her feet like grains of incense.
"Yet he is only an old man," resumed Poussin. "In you he would see
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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 The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: seen your dances in your hidden places,--the sight that never
man saw! Give him honor, my lords! Salaam karo, my children.
Make your salute to Toomai of the Elephants! Gunga Pershad, ahaa!
Hira Guj, Birchi Guj, Kuttar Guj, ahaa! Pudmini,--thou hast
seen him at the dance, and thou too, Kala Nag, my pearl among
elephants!--ahaa! Together! To Toomai of the Elephants.
Barrao!"
And at that last wild yell the whole line flung up their
trunks till the tips touched their foreheads, and broke out into
the full salute--the crashing trumpet-peal that only the Viceroy
of India hears, the Salaamut of the Keddah.
The Jungle Book |
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 Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: would be soon decided The sound grew into a clattering roar. A black
mass hurled itself over the border of opaque circle, plunged into tile
light, and halted.
August Naab deliberately threw a bundle of grease-wood upon the
camp-fire. A blaze leaped up, sending abroad a red flare. "Who comes?"
he called.
"Friends, Mormons, friends," was the answer.
"Get down--friends--and come to the fire."
Three horsemen advanced to the foreground; others, a troop of eight or
ten, remained in the shadow, a silent group.
Hare sank back against the stone. He knew the foremost of those horsemen
The Heritage of the Desert |
