| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: unpitying. As he observed carefully all the usual forms towards
his lady, he had the art to deprive her even of the compassion of
the world; and useless and unavailing as that may be while
actually possessed by the sufferer, it is, to a mind like Lady
Forester's, most painful to know she has it not.
The tattle of society did its best to place the peccant husband
above the suffering wife. Some called her a poor, spiritless
thing, and declared that, with a little of her sister's spirit,
she might have brought to reason any Sir Philip whatsoever, were
it the termagant Falconbridge himself. But the greater part of
their acquaintance affected candour, and saw faults on both
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: blade of a sabre on the young man's forearm, and a moan escaped her.
The stranger raised his head and smiled to her. There was something
touching which went to the soul, in the care with which Servin lifted
the lint and touched the lacerated flesh, while the face of the
wounded man, though pale and sickly, expressed, as he looked at the
girl, more pleasure than suffering. An artist would have admired,
involuntarily, this opposition of sentiments, together with the
contrasts produced by the whiteness of the linen and the bared arm to
the red and blue uniform of the officer.
At this moment a soft half-light pervaded the studio; but a parting
ray of the evening sunlight suddenly illuminated the spot where the
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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 Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: offered Mr. Bates's place of East Sheen, which was most gratefully
accepted.
Friday
This morning came Thackeray, who is the soul of PUNCH, and showed me
a piece he had written for the next number.
Saturday
The King has arrived. What a crossing of the Channel, pea-jacket,
woollen comforter, and all! The flight is a perfect comedy, and if
PUNCH had tried to invent anything more ludicrous, it would have
failed. Panic, despotism, and cowardice.
These things are much more exciting here than across the water. We
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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 Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: like that for, Huck Finn? You wait till I say a thing's
got sense in it before you go to accusing me of say-
ing it."
"All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry.
Go on."
Jim says:
"Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything
we can't raise in America, en don't make no 'stinction
'twix' anything?"
"Yes, that's what they do."
"Mars Tom, ain't de blessin' o' de Lord de mos'
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