| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: trousers of white woolen stuff, and a dazzling shirt? There he stood,
with a gorgeous cap on his black dyed hair, playing with the tassels
at his waist--"
" 'Tis a bit of genre for anybody who knows what the pretty little
morning room, hung with silk and full of valuable paintings, where
Maxime breakfasts," said Nathan. "You tread on a Smyrna carpet, you
admire the sideboards filled with curiosities and rarities fit to make
a King of Saxony envious--"
"Now for the scene itself," said Desroches, and the deepest silence
followed.
" 'Monsieur le Comte,' began Cerizet, 'I have come from a M. Charles
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: flesh, and I angrily stopped him. Then he bent down
and began gnawing the shaft of the arrow with his
teeth. As he did so he held the arrow firmly in both
hands so that it would not play about in the wound, and
at the same time I held on to him. I often meditate
upon this scene--the two of us, half-grown cubs, in the
childhood of the race, and the one mastering his fear,
beating down his selfish impulse of flight, in order to
stand by and succor the other. And there rises up
before me all that was there foreshadowed, and I see
visions of Damon and Pythias, of life-saving crews and
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with their
dead--that something like the furor which affects the domestic
cattle in the spring, and which is referred to a worm in their
tails,--affects both nations and individuals, either perennially
or from time to time. Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our
town, but it to some extent unsettles the value of real estate
here, and, if I were a broker, I should probably take that
disturbance into account.
"Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes."
Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to
Walking |
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 Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: the Kingdom of God means,--"not meat and drink, but justice, peace,
and joy in the Holy Ghost," nor until you know also that such joy is
not by any means, necessarily, in going to church, or in singing
hymns; but may be joy in a dance, or joy in a jest, or joy in
anything you have deserved to possess, or that you are willing to
give; but joy in nothing that separates you, as by any strange
favour, from your fellow-creatures, that exalts you through their
degradation--exempts you from their toil--or indulges you in time of
their distress.
Think, then, and some day, I believe, you will feel also,--no morbid
passion of pity such as would turn you into a black Sister of
|
