| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: The promotion of Monsieur Tiphaine and his translation to Paris were
therefore of no benefit at all to the Vinet party; but Vinet
nevertheless made a clever use of the result. He had always told the
Provins people that they were being used as a stepping-stone to raise
the crafty Madame Tiphaine into grandeur; Tiphaine himself had tricked
them; Madame Tiphaine despised both Provins and its people in her
heart, and would never return there again. Just at this crisis
Monsieur Tiphaine's father died; his son inherited a fine estate and
sold his house in Provins to Monsieur Julliard. The sale proved to the
minds of all how little the Tiphaines thought of Provins. Vinet was
right; Vinet had been a true prophet. These things had great influence
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: place. In the revolution she beholds justice, and temperance, and
knowledge absolute, not in the form of generation or of relation, which men
call existence, but knowledge absolute in existence absolute; and beholding
the other true existences in like manner, and feasting upon them, she
passes down into the interior of the heavens and returns home; and there
the charioteer putting up his horses at the stall, gives them ambrosia to
eat and nectar to drink.
Such is the life of the gods; but of other souls, that which follows God
best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer
world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the
steeds, and with difficulty beholding true being; while another only rises
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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 Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: All his talks with his daughter ended in this way. It was always
what Tom would have thought. Why should a poor crazy cripple like
her husband, shut up in an asylum, make trouble for Jennie?
When the light faded and the trees grew indistinct in the gloom,
Tom still sat where Pop had left her. Soon the shadows fell in
the little valley, and the hill beyond the cedars lost itself in
the deepening haze that now crept in from the tranquil sea.
Carl's voice calling to Cully to take in the Gray roused her to
consciousness. She pushed back her chair, stood for an instant
watching Carl romping with Patsy, and then walked slowly toward
the stable.
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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 Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: why he should not have dealings with thy father."
"I had not thought," said Myles, bitterly, after a little pause,
"that thou wouldst stand up for him and against me in this
quarrel, Gascoyne. Him will I never forgive so long as I may
live, and I had thought that thou wouldst have stood by me."
"So I do," said Gascoyne, hastily, "and do love thee more than
any one in all the world, Myles; but I had thought that it would
make thee feel more easy, to think that the Earl was not against
thee. And, indeed, from all thou has told me, I do soothly think
that he and Sir James mean to befriend thee and hold thee privily
in kind regard."
Men of Iron |
