| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: pistols and cutlasses; nevertheless this was their one and their
only chance, and they determined to take the Spanish ship or to
die in the attempt. Down upon the Spaniard they bore through the
dusk of the night, and giving orders to the "chirurgeon" to
scuttle their craft under them as they were leaving it, they
swarmed up the side of the unsuspecting ship and upon its decks
in a torrent--pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other. A
part of them ran to the gun room and secured the arms and
ammunition, pistoling or cutting down all such as stood in their
way or offered opposition; the other party burst into the great
cabin at the heels of Pierre le Grand, found the captain and a
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: with gratitude, the count put his head, now entirely white, out of the
door and immediately sprang towards me with signs of surprise.
"She was right! He is here! 'Felix, Felix, Felix has come!' she kept
crying. My dear friend," he continued, beside himself with terror,
"death is here. Why did it not take a poor madman like me with one
foot in the grave?"
I walked towards the house summoning my courage, but on the threshold
of the long antechamber which crossed the house and led to the lawn,
the Abbe Birotteau stopped me.
"Madame la comtesse begs you will not enter at present," he said to
me.
The Lily of the Valley |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: their teeth clashed.
"I am too long here," thought Keola, and ran further out of the
wood and down the beach, not caring whither.
"Keola!" said, a voice close by upon the empty sand.
"Lehua! is that you?" he cried, and gasped, and looked in vain for
her; but by the eyesight he was stark alone.
"I saw you pass before," the voice answered: "but you would not
hear me. Quick! get the leaves and the herbs, and let us free."
"You are there with the mat?" he asked.
"Here, at your side;" said she. And he felt her arms about him.
"Quick! the leaves and the herbs, before my father can get back!"
|
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 Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: been free from vices. Thus he squandered without remorse in gambling
hells, and drank elsewhere, the few dividends which the National
Treasury paid to its bondholders. Then he handed over the child to an
aged sister, a Demoiselle de Marsay, who took much care of him, and
provided him, out of the meagre sum allowed by her brother, with a
tutor, an abbe without a farthing, who took the measure of the youth's
future, and determined to pay himself out of the hundred thousand
livres for the care given to his pupil, for whom he conceived an
affection. As chance had it, this tutor was a true priest, one of
those ecclesiastics cut out to become cardinals in France, or Borgias
beneath the tiara. He taught the child in three years what he might
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
