| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: is very fond of you, my dear fellow, but your liaison with her,
in her interests and in yours, ought not to be serious. You with
your seven or eight thousand francs a year, what could you do
toward supplying all the luxuries which a girl like that is in
need of? It would not be enough to keep her carriage. Take
Marguerite for what she is, for a good, bright, pretty girl; be
her lover for a month, two months; give her flowers, sweets,
boxes at the theatre; but don't get any other ideas into your
head, and don't make absurd scenes of jealousy. You know whom you
have to do with; Marguerite isn't a saint. She likes you, you are
very fond of her; let the rest alone. You amaze me when I see you
Camille |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: and qualifications--no one so much as thought of raising the
questions. His land was undeniable, his rentals steady; excellent
plantations had been made; the tenants paid for repairs, rates, and
taxes; the apple-trees were thirty-eight years old; and, to crown all,
his father was in treaty for two hundred acres of woodland just
outside the paternal park, which he intended to enclose with walls. No
hopes of a political career, no fame on earth, can compare with such
advantages as these.
Whether out of malice or design, Mme. de Sainte-Severe omitted to
mention that Gaston had an elder brother; nor did Gaston himself say a
word about him. But, at the same time, it is true that the brother was
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: space, and had had the pleasure of making faces at him
and angering him from the mouth of my cave. Beyond
such amenities I had left my family severely alone. I
was not much interested in it, and anyway I was doing
very well by myself.
After eating our fill of berries, with two nestfuls of
partly hatched quail-eggs for dessert, Lop-Ear and I
wandered circumspectly into the woods toward the river.
Here was where stood my old home-tree, out of which I
had been thrown by the Chatterer. It was still
occupied. There had been increase in the family.
|
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 Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: ant class, of singing, dancing, and carousing; but
his irresponsible gaiety and heedlessness of conse-
quences balanced by a fatalistic courage and en-
durance in the face of suffering and danger.
Capable, besides, of high flights of idealism,
which result in epics, but rarely in actions, owing
to the Slavonic inaptitude for sustained and or-
ganised effort. The Englishman by contrast ap-
pears cold and calculating, incapable of rising
above questions of practical utility; neither inter-
ested in other men's antecedents and experiences
The Forged Coupon |
