| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: weariness of a life depressed by constant privations had driven me to
study, just as men, weary of fate, confine themselves in a cloister.
To me, study had become a passion, which might even be fatal to my
health by imprisoning me at a period of life when young men ought to
yield to the bewitching activities of their springtide youth.
This slight sketch of my boyhood, in which you, Natalie, can readily
perceive innumerable songs of woe, was needful to explain to you its
influence on my future life. At twenty years of age, and affected by
many morbid elements, I was still small and thin and pale. My soul,
filled with the will to do, struggled with a body that seemed weakly,
but which, in the words of an old physician at Tours, was undergoing
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rinkitink In Oz by L. Frank Baum: 3 The Warriors from the North
4 The Deserted Island
5 The Three Pearls
6 The Magic Boat
7 The Twin Islands
8 Rinkitink Makes a Great Mistake
9 A Present for Zella
10 The Cunning of Queen Cor
11 Zella Goes to Coregos
12 The Excitement of Bilbil the Goat
13 Zella Saves the Prince
Rinkitink In Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: King. How do ye, pretty Lady?
Ophe. Well, God dil'd you. They say the Owle was
a Bakers daughter. Lord, wee know what we are, but
know not what we may be. God be at your Table
King. Conceit vpon her Father
Ophe. Pray you let's haue no words of this: but when
they aske you what it meanes, say you this:
To morrow is S[aint]. Valentines day, all in the morning betime,
And I a Maid at your Window, to be your Valentine.
Then vp he rose, & don'd his clothes, & dupt the chamber dore,
Let in the Maid, that out a Maid, neuer departed more
Hamlet |
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 Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: said the lady. ``Ah, how she did laugh and crow and jump when her
father took the peacock-feather-fly-brush from the maid, and waved
it in front of her! She would seize the ends of the feathers, and
laugh and crow louder than ever, and hide her laughing little face
deep into the feathers--Ah me--''
But Bessie Bell said nothing, nor remembered anything. For she did
not know that the lady was talking of something green, and blue, and
soft, and brown.
And it was Sister Justina, and not Sister Helen Vincula, who had
told her to be ashamed when she had cried: Pretty! Pretty! Pretty!
as the something green, and blue, and soft, and brown was waved to
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