| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: an exhausted vein? Somehow, standing there in the ripeness of his
successful manhood, he didn't suggest that any of his veins were
exhausted. "Don't you remember the moral I offered myself to you
that night as pointing?" St. George continued. "Consider at any
rate the warning I am at present."
This was too much - he WAS the mocking fiend. Paul turned from him
with a mere nod for goodnight and the sense in a sore heart that he
might come back to him and his easy grace, his fine way of
arranging things, some time in the far future, but couldn't
fraternise with him now. It was necessary to his soreness to
believe for the hour in the intensity of his grievance - all the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the
one gives rise is not the passion of the other. To get her full of
life, perhaps a woman ought to have experience of both. Can the two
passions ever co-exist? Can the man in whom we inspire love inspire it
in us? Will the day ever come when Felipe is my master? Shall I
tremble then, as he does now? These are questions which make me
shudder.
He is very blind! In his place I should have thought Mlle. de
Chaulieu, meeting me under the limes, a cold, calculating coquette,
with starched manners. No, that is not love, it is playing with fire.
I am still fond of Felipe, but I am calm and at my ease with him now.
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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 Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: chance?"
"Nevertheless," said the Sieur de la Montaigne, in the same
hoarse, breathless voice, "I do affirm, and will make my
affirmation good with my body, that I fell only by the breaking
of my girth. Who says otherwise lies!"
"It is the truth he speaketh," said Myles. "I myself saw the
stitches were some little what burst, and warned him thereof
before we ran this course.
"Sir," said the Marshal to the Sieur de la Montaigne, "how can
you now complain of that thing which your own enemy advised you
of and warned you against? Was it not right knightly for him so
Men of Iron |
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 Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: wrecked in a night of storm a hundred years ago.
There are a score of wooden houses, a tiny, weather-beaten chapel, a
Hudson Bay Company's store, a row of platforms for drying fish, and
a varied assortment of boats and nets, strung along the beach now.
Dead Men's Point has developed into a centre of industry, with a
life, a tradition, a social character of its own. And in one of
those houses, as you sit at the door in the lingering June twilight,
looking out across the deep channel to where the lantern of the
tower is just beginning to glow with orange radiance above the
shadow of the island--in that far-away place, in that mystical hour,
you should hear the story of the light and its keeper.
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