| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: the grass of the plains, sowing seed of better quality, there being no
longer any occasion to fear drought.
During this year a man from Montegnac started a diligence between the
chief town of the arrondissement and Limoges, leaving both places each
day. Monsieur Clousier's nephew sold his office and obtained a license
as notary in Montegnac. The government appointed Fresquin collector of
the district. The new notary built himself a pretty house in the upper
part of Montegnac, planted mulberries in the grounds, and became after
a time assistant-mayor to his friend Gerard.
The engineer, encouraged by so much success, now conceived a scheme of
a nature to render Madame Graslin's fortune colossal,--she herself
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: for either the jury's verdict in some peculiarly absorbing
criminal trial, or the announcement of the lucky numbers
in a great lottery. These two expressions seemed
to alternate, and even to mingle vaguely, upon the
upturned lineaments of the waiting throng--the hope
of some unnamed stroke of fortune and the dread of some adverse decree.
But a glance forward at the object of this universal
gaze would have sufficed to shatter both hypotheses.
Here was neither a court of justice nor a tombola.
It was instead the closing session of the annual
Nedahma Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: thing we generally make it. Even a German band, if you see it
leaving town in the early morning for a campaign in country places,
among trees and meadows, has a romantic flavour for the
imagination. There is nobody, under thirty, so dead but his heart
will stir a little at sight of a gypsies' camp. 'We are not
cotton-spinners all'; or, at least, not all through. There is some
life in humanity yet: and youth will now and again find a brave
word to say in dispraise of riches, and throw up a situation to go
strolling with a knapsack.
An Englishman has always special facilities for intercourse with
French gymnasts; for England is the natural home of gymnasts. This
|
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 Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: marched wearily, marched with a kind of implacable futility,
along the roadway underneath him. He was, he says, moved to join
them, but instead he remained watching. They were a dingy,
shabby, ineffective-looking multitude, for the most part
incapable of any but obsolete and superseded types of labour.
They bore a few banners with the time-honoured inscription:
'Work, not Charity,' but otherwise their ranks were unadorned.
They were not singing, they were not even talking, there was
nothing truculent nor aggressive in their bearing, they had no
definite objective they were just marching and showing themselves
in the more prosperous parts of London. They were a sample of
The Last War: A World Set Free |
