| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: who should select as praiseworthy the reckless imperilling of mighty
interests. On the contrary, what I admire is the fact that he had
taken care to provide himself with an army not inferior to that of his
enemy, and had so equipped them that his cohorts literally gleamed
with purple and bronze.[6] He had taken pains to enable his soldiers
to undergo the fatigue of war, he had filled their breasts with a
proud consciousness that they were equal to do battle with any
combatants in the world, and what was more, he had infused a wholesome
rivalry in those about him to prove themselves each better than the
rest. He had filled all hearts with sanguine expectation of great
blessings to descend on all, if they proved themselves good men. Such
|
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 Pupil by Henry James: CHAPTER II
On the Friday he saw them all, as Mrs. Moreen had promised, for her
husband had come back and the girls and the other son were at home.
Mr. Moreen had a white moustache, a confiding manner and, in his
buttonhole, the ribbon of a foreign order - bestowed, as Pemberton
eventually learned, for services. For what services he never
clearly ascertained: this was a point - one of a large number -
that Mr. Moreen's manner never confided. What it emphatically did
confide was that he was even more a man of the world than you might
first make out. Ulick, the firstborn, was in visible training for
the same profession - under the disadvantage as yet, however, of a
|
