| 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: she had lately exchanged with me for that famous picture of Rembrandt
which I obtained in so singular a way, and which now hangs in her
drawing-room in London. I took the road I had traversed on foot six
years earlier and stopped beneath my walnut-tree. From there I saw
Madame de Mortsauf in a white dress standing at the edge of the
terrace. Instantly I rode towards her with the speed of lightning, in
a straight line and across country. She heard the stride of the
swallow of the desert and when I pulled him up suddenly at the
terrace, she said to me: "Oh, you here!"
Those three words blasted me. She knew my treachery. Who had told her?
her mother, whose hateful letter she afterwards showed me. The feeble,
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 Bucolics by Virgil: "Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Now know I what Love is: 'mid savage rocks
Tmaros or Rhodope brought forth the boy,
Or Garamantes in earth's utmost bounds-
No kin of ours, nor of our blood begot.
"Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Fierce Love it was once steeled a mother's heart
With her own offspring's blood her hands to imbrue:
Mother, thou too wert cruel; say wert thou
More cruel, mother, or more ruthless he?
Ruthless the boy, thou, mother, cruel too.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: 1. The "Anobium." Of this beetle there are varieties, viz.:
"A. pertinax," "A. eruditus," and "A. paniceum." In the larval
state they are grubs, just like those found, in nuts; in this stage
they are too much alike to be distinguished from one another.
They feed on old dry wood, and often infest bookcases and shelves.
They eat the wooden boards of old books, and so pass into the paper
where they make long holes quite round, except when they work
in a slanting direction, when the holes appear to be oblong.
They will thus pierce through several volumes in succession,
Peignot, the well-known bibliographer, having found 27 volumes
so pierced in a straight line by one worm, a miracle of gluttony,
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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 Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: supreme, and the matter was entirely different. His bill provided
that the Federal Government should pay full value to the
slave-holders of the District for all slaves in their possession,
and should at once free the older ones. The younger ones were to
be apprenticed for a term of years, in order to make them
self-supporting, after which they also were to receive their
freedom. The bill was very carefully thought out, and had the
approval of residents of the District who held the most varied
views upon slavery; but good as it was, the measure was never
allowed to come to a vote, and Lincoln went back to Springfield,
at the end of his term, feeling doubtless that his efforts in
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