| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: undress, we heard a noise in our neighbor's room. He got up, struck a
match, and lighted his dip. I got on to the drawers again, and I then
saw Marcas seated at his table and copying law-papers.
His room was about half the size of ours; the bed stood in a recess by
the door, for the passage ended there, and its breadth was added to
his garret; but the ground on which the house was built was evidently
irregular, for the party-wall formed an obtuse angle, and the room was
not square. There was no fireplace, only a small earthenware stove,
white blotched with green, of which the pipe went up through the roof.
The window, in the skew side of the room, had shabby red curtains. The
furniture consisted of an armchair, a table, a chair, and a wretched
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: tiger was the son of one of his farmers, a small servant aged
fourteen, thick-set, and named Babylas. The lion dressed his tiger
very smartly--a short tunic-coat of iron-gray cloth, belted with
patent leather, bright blue plush breeches, a red waistcoat, polished
leather top-boots, a shiny hat with black lacing, and brass buttons
with the arms of Soulas. Amedee gave this boy white cotton gloves and
his washing, and thirty-six francs a month to keep himself--a sum that
seemed enormous to the grisettes of Besancon: four hundred and twenty
francs a year to a child of fifteen, without counting extras! The
extras consisted in the price for which he could sell his turned
clothes, a present when Soulas exchanged one of his horses, and the
Albert Savarus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: but never a comrade's joke--I sounded Frank Saltram in his ears; a
circumstance I mention in order to note that even then I was
surprised at his impatience of my enlivenment. As he had never
before heard of the personage it took indeed the form of impatience
of the preposterous Mulvilles, his relation to whom, like mine, had
had its origin in an early, a childish intimacy with the young
Adelaide, the fruit of multiplied ties in the previous generation.
When she married Kent Mulville, who was older than Gravener and I
and much more amiable, I gained a friend, but Gravener practically
lost one. We reacted in different ways from the form taken by what
he called their deplorable social action--the form (the term was
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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 Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: ourselves for what we are, one out of the countless number of the
clans of thy handiwork. When we would despair, let us remember
that these also please and serve Thee.
BEFORE A TEMPORARY SEPARATION
TO-DAY we go forth separate, some of us to pleasure, some of us to
worship, some upon duty. Go with us, our guide and angel; hold
Thou before us in our divided paths the mark of our low calling,
still to be true to what small best we can attain to. Help us in
that, our maker, the dispenser of events - Thou, of the vast
designs, in which we blindly labour, suffer us to be so far
constant to ourselves and our beloved.
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