| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: A light entered my brain: John Mayrant had a position at the Custom
House! John Mayrant was subordinate to the President's appointee! She
hadn't changed the subject so violently, after all.
I came squarely at it. "And so you wish him to resign his position?"
But I was ahead of her this time.
"The Chief of Customs?" she wonderingly murmured.
I brought her up with me now. "Did Miss Josephine St. Michael say it was
over his left eye?"
The girl instantly looked everything she thought. "I believe you were
present!" This was her highly comprehensive exclamation, accompanied also
by a blush as splendidly young as John Mayrant had been while he so
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: plaintive stranger to the light. Does it not strike you that she looks
like an elegy?"
"Do you think so, Montcornet? Then she must be a married woman?"
"Why not a widow?"
"She would be less passive," said the lawyer, laughing.
"She is perhaps the widow of a man who is gambling," replied the
handsome Colonel.
"To be sure; since the peace there are so many widows of that class!"
said Martial. "But my dear Montcornet, we are a couple of simpletons.
That face is still too ingenuous, there is too much youth and
freshness on the brow and temples for her to be married. What splendid
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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 Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: him. At first he saw a sea of faces: the mill-men,--women he
had known, drunken and bloated,--Janey's timid and pitiful-poor
old Debs: then they floated together like a mist, and faded
away, leaving only the clear, pearly moonlight.
Whether, as the pure light crept up the stretched-out figure, it
brought with It calm and peace, who shall say? His dumb soul
was alone with God in judgment. A Voice may have spoken for it
from far-off Calvary, "Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do!" Who dare say? Fainter and fainter the heart
rose and fell, slower and slower the moon floated from behind a
cloud, until, when at last its full tide of white splendor swept
Life in the Iron-Mills |
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 Statesman by Plato: Plato seems to stumble, almost by accident, on the notion of a
constitutional monarchy, or of a monarchy ruling by laws.
The divine foundations of a State are to be laid deep in education
(Republic), and at the same time some little violence may be used in
exterminating natures which are incapable of education (compare Laws).
Plato is strongly of opinion that the legislator, like the physician, may
do men good against their will (compare Gorgias). The human bonds of
states are formed by the inter-marriage of dispositions adapted to supply
the defects of each other. As in the Republic, Plato has observed that
there are opposite natures in the world, the strong and the gentle, the
courageous and the temperate, which, borrowing an expression derived from
Statesman |
