| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: One seemed to be saying--"The frozen heart of age might kindle at
my beauty."
Another--"I love to lounge upon cushions, and think with rapture
of my adorers."
A third, a neophyte at these banquets, was inclined to blush. "I
feel remorse in the depths of my heart! I am a Catholic, and
afraid of hell. But I love you, I love you so that I can
sacrifice my hereafter to you."
The fourth drained a cup of Chian wine. "Give me a joyous life!"
she cried; "I begin life afresh each day with the dawn. Forgetful
of the past, with the intoxication of yesterday's rapture still
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: and woods, and clearings, past the dark and silent skirts of the
town, and so, at last, out upon the wide, misty salt marshes,
which seemed to stretch away interminably through the pallid
light, yet were bounded in the far distance by the long, white
line of sand hills.
Across the level salt marshes he followed them, through the rank
sedge and past the glassy pools in which his own inverted image
stalked beneath as he stalked above; on and on, until at last
they had reached a belt of scrub pines, gnarled and gray, that
fringed the foot of the white sand hills.
Here Hiram kept within the black network of shadow. The two whom
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: beauty, he likewise remained in the memory of all mothers as the best
match in France.
The beauty, the great wealth, the intellectual qualities, of these two
children came entirely from their mother. The Comte de Lanty was a
short, thin, ugly little man, as dismal as a Spaniard, as great a bore
as a banker. He was looked upon, however, as a profound politician,
perhaps because he rarely laughed, and was always quoting M. de
Metternich or Wellington.
This mysterious family had all the attractiveness of a poem by Lord
Byron, whose difficult passages were translated differently by each
person in fashionable society; a poem that grew more obscure and more
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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 Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: Each goes searching after pleasure in his own selected way,
Each with strangers likes to wander, and with strangers likes to play.
But it's bitterness they harvest, and it's empty joy they find,
For the children that are wisest are the stick-together kind.
There are some who seem to fancy that for gladness they must roam,
That for smiles that are the brightest they must wander far from home.
That the strange friend is the true friend, and they travel far astray
they waste their lives in striving for a joy that's far away,
But the gladdest sort of people, when the busy day is done,
Are the brothers and the sisters who together share their fun.
It's the stick-together family that wins the joys of earth,
Just Folks |
