| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: /filet saute/ with mushrooms to follow it?" said Laurent, who wished
to win the postman's valuable friendship.
"At half-past nine, when my round is finished---- Where?"
"At the corner of the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin and the Rue Neuve-
des-Mathurins, at the /Puits sans Vin/," said Laurent.
"Hark ye, my friend," said the postman, when he rejoined the valet an
hour after this encounter, "if your master is in love with the girl,
he is in for a famous task. I doubt you'll not succeed in seeing her.
In the ten years that I've been postman in Paris, I have seen plenty
of different kinds of doors! But I can tell you, and no fear of being
called a liar by any of my comrades, there never was a door so
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: So I return rebuk'd to my content,
And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.
CXX
That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time;
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffer'd in your crime.
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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 Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians by Martin Luther: faith. Heaven and earth ought to know about him and about his faith in
Christ. The working Abraham ought to look pretty small next to the believing
Abraham.
Paul's words contain the implication of contrast. When he quotes Scripture to
the effect that all nations that share the faith of faithful Abraham are to
be blessed, Paul means to imply the contrast that all nations are accursed
without faith in Christ.
VERSE 10. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the
curse.
The curse of God is like a flood that swallows everything that is not of
faith. To avoid the curse we must hold on to the promise of the blessing in
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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 The Reef by Edith Wharton: life that's big and ugly and struggling. If I can extract
beauty out of THAT, so much the better: that'll prove my
vocation. But I want to MAKE beauty, not be drowned in
the ready-made, like a bee in a pot of honey."
Darrow knew that he was being appealed to for corroboration
of these views and for encouragement in the course to which
they pointed. To his own ears his answers sounded now curt,
now irrelevant: at one moment he seemed chillingly
indifferent, at another he heard himself launching out on a
flood of hazy discursiveness. He dared not look at Owen,
for fear of detecting the lad's surprise at these senseless
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