| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: when he was lost in meditation. They then looked like a window from
which the sun had suddenly vanished after lighting it up. His strength
and his voice were no less variable; equally rigid, equally
unexpected. His tone could be as sweet as that of a woman compelled to
own her love; at other times it was labored, rough, rugged, if I may
use such words in a new sense. As to his strength, he was habitually
incapable of enduring the fatigue of any game, and seemed weakly,
almost infirm. But during the early days of his school-life, one of
our little bullies having made game of this sickliness, which rendered
him unfit for the violent exercise in vogue among his fellows, Lambert
took hold with both hands of one of the class-tables, consisting of
Louis Lambert |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: phantom, though in the popular superstition it is held to be the
soul of the departed, must not be confounded with the true soul; it
is but the eidolon of the dead form. Hence, like the best-attested
stories of ghosts or spirits, the thing that most strikes us is the
absence of what we hold to be soul,--that is, of superior
emancipated intelligence. These apparitions come for little or no
object,--they seldom speak when they do come; if they speak, they
utter no ideas above those of an ordinary person on earth.
American spirit seers have published volumes of communications, in
prose and verse, which they assert to be given in the names of the
most illustrious dead: Shakespeare, Bacon,--Heaven knows whom.
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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 Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: to hear him. How distinct his voice is--how personal, how
confidential, as if he had a message for us!
There is a breath of fragrance on the cool shady air beside our
little stream, that seems familiar. It is the first week of
September. Can it be that the twin-flower of June, the delicate
Linnaea borealis, is blooming again? Yes, here is the threadlike
stem lifting its two frail pink bells above the bed of shining
leaves. How dear an early flower seems when it comes back again
and unfolds its beauty in a St. Martin's summer! How delicate and
suggestive is the faint, magical odour! It is like a renewal of
the dreams of youth.
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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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: person set off by a dove-colored blouse and a maroon velvet cap,
so that everything was as fortunate as if he had expected the
beautiful young English lady exactly at that time.
The painter in his confident English gave little dissertations on his
finished and unfinished subjects, seeming to observe Mr. Casaubon
as much as he did Dorothea. Will burst in here and there with ardent
words of praise, marking out particular merits in his friend's work;
and Dorothea felt that she was getting quite new notions as to
the significance of Madonnas seated under inexplicable canopied
thrones with the simple country as a background, and of saints
with architectural models in their hands, or knives accidentally
Middlemarch |
