| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: covered with a lace cloth and draped with green wreaths. In the middle
stood a little frame containing relics; at the corners were two little
orange-trees, and all along the edge were silver candlesticks,
porcelain vases containing sun-flowers, lilies, peonies, and tufts of
hydrangeas. This mount of bright colours descended diagonally from the
first floor to the carpet that covered the sidewalk. Rare objects
arrested one's eye. A golden sugar-bowl was crowned with violets,
earrings set with Alencon stones were displayed on green moss, and two
Chinese screens with their bright landscapes were near by. Loulou,
hidden beneath roses, showed nothing but his blue head which looked
like a piece of lapis-lazuli.
A Simple Soul |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: prettiest places in the world, Marilla."
It was. Other people besides Anne thought so when they stumbled
on it. It was a little narrow, twisting path, winding down over
a long hill straight through Mr. Bell's woods, where the light
came down sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as
flawless as the heart of a diamond. It was fringed in all its
length with slim young birches, white stemmed and lissom boughed;
ferns and starflowers and wild lilies-of-the-valley and scarlet
tufts of pigeonberries grew thickly along it; and always there
was a delightful spiciness in the air and music of bird calls and
the murmur and laugh of wood winds in the trees overhead. Now
Anne of Green Gables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: a sou, without a friend, without credit, and forced to work with
his five fingers to live at all! What would he do? Where would he
go to satisfy his hunger?
"Bianchon, if you have sometimes seen me hard and bitter, it was
because I was adding my early sufferings on to the insensibility,
the selfishness of which I have seen thousands of instances in
the highest circles; or, perhaps, I was thinking of the obstacles
which hatred, envy, jealousy, and calumny raised up between me
and success. In Paris, when certain people see you ready to set
your foot in the stirrup, some pull your coat-tails, others
loosen the buckle of the strap that you may fall and crack your
|
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 Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: away with her into the forests and green fields she loved, or
he would share in the life of usefulness for which she yearned.
But then, what was he to do with this little waif from the
heart's tropics,--once tampered with, in an hour of mad
dalliance, and now adhering in-separably to his life?
Supposing him ready to separate from her, could she be detached
from him?
Kate's anxieties, when she at last hinted them to Malbone, only
sent him further into revery. "How is it," he asked himself,
"that when I only sought to love and be loved, I have thus
entangled myself in the fate of others? How is one's heart to
|
