The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: the streets like a drunken man, and presently found himself in his own
room without knowing how he came there. He flung himself into an arm-
chair, put his head in his hands and his feet on the andirons, drying
his boots until he burned them. It was an awful moment,--one of those
moments in human life when the character is moulded, and the future
conduct of the best of men depends on the good or evil fortune of his
first action. Providence or fatality?--choose which you will.
This young man belonged to a good family, whose nobility was not very
ancient; but there are so few really old families in these days, that
all men of rank are ancient without dispute. His grandfather had
bought the office of counsellor to the Parliament of Paris, where he
Ferragus |
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 Sportsman by Xenophon: {ekkunousi}, are skirters; al. {ekkinousi}, Sturz, quit the scent.
[31] Al. "unceasingly tearing along, around, and about it."
The majority of these defects are due to natural disposition, though
some must be assigned no doubt to want of scientific training. In
either case such hounds are useless, and may well deter the keenest
sportsman from the hunting field.[32]
[32] Or, "Naturally, dogs like these damp the sportsman's ardour, and
indeed are enough to sicken him altogether with the chase."
The characters, bodily and other, exhibited by the finer specimens of
the same breed,[33] I will now set forth.
[33] Or, "The features, points, qualities, whether physical or other,
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