| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: saying she can never forget that I was devoted to her mother--which
I wouldn't for the world have been--and of giving me a wide berth.
I think she positively dislikes to look at me. It's all right;
there's no obligation; though people in general can't take their
eyes off me."
"I see that at this moment," I replied. "But what does it matter
where or how, for the present, she lives? She'll marry infallibly,
marry early, and everything then will change."
"Whom will she marry?" my companion gloomily asked.
"Any one she likes. She's so abnormally pretty that she can do
anything. She'll fascinate some nabob or some prince."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: obstacle to her reestablishment of the dynasty was eliminated by
the Empress-mother. To show Prince Kung, however, that they bore
him no ill will, the Empresses adopted his daughter as their own,
raising her to the rank of an imperial princess, and though the
Prince has long since passed away his daughter still lives, and
next to the Empress Dowager has been the leading figure in court
circles during the past ten years' association with the
foreigners.
During her son's minority, after the dismissal of Prince Kung as
joint regent, the Empress-mother year by year took a more active
part in the affairs of state, while the Empress as gradually sank
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: to which more importance is, alas, attached than you are aware of
at your age. These two existences must, however, be made to
harmonize in the ideal which you cherish; and this, I may remark
in passing, is very rare.
The pure, spontaneous, disinterested homage of a solitary soul
which is both educated and chaste, is one of those celestial
flowers whose color and fragrance console for every grief, for
every wound, for every betrayal which makes up the life of a
literary man; and I thank you with an impulse equal to your own.
But after this poetical exchange of my griefs for the pearls of
your charity, what next? what do you expect? I have neither the
Modeste Mignon |
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 Mansion by Henry van Dyke: place on
her third finger in modest dignity, as if not shamed, but rather
justified,
by the splendor of the emerald which glittered beside them.
"Mother," he said, "you have a wonderful hand. And father made
no mistake
when he won you. But are you sure he has always been so
inerrant?"
"Harold," she exclaimed, a little stiffly, "what do you mean?
His life is an open book."
"Oh," he answered, "I don't mean anything bad, mother dear.
|
