| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: forced Madame Claes, naturally much alarmed, to question her husband's
notary and, disregarding her pride, to reveal to him her secret
anxieties or let him guess them, and even ask her the humiliating
question,--
"How is it that Monsieur Claes has not told you of this?"
Happily, the notary was almost a relation,--in this wise: The
grandfather of Monsieur Claes had married a Pierquin of Antwerp, of
the same family as the Pierquins of Douai. Since the marriage the
latter, though strangers to the Claes, claimed them as cousins.
Monsieur Pierquin, a young man twenty-six years of age, who had just
succeeded to his father's practice, was the only person who now had
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: yet a new day succeeded to the night, and sorrow is never long
without a dawn of ease. But they who restrain themselves from
receiving comfort do as the savages would have done had they put
out their eyes when it was dark. Our minds, like our bodies, are
in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something
acquired. To lose much at once is inconvenient to either, but
while the vital power remains uninjured, nature will find the means
of reparation. Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the
eye; and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave
behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach
increasing in magnitude. Do not suffer life to stagnate: it will
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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 A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: Notwithstanding his age, Mr. Justice Hawkins felt it his duty
to sentence him to penal servitude for life. The severity of the
sentence was undoubtedly a painful surprise to Peace; to a man of
sixty years of age it would be no doubt less terrible, but to a
man of forty-six it was crushing.
Not that Peace was fated to serve any great part of his sentence.
With as little delay as possible he was to be called on to answer
to the murder of Arthur Dyson. The buxom widow of the murdered
man had been found in America, whither she had returned after her
husband's death. She was quite ready to come to England to give
evidence against her husband's murderer. On January 17, 1879,
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
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 Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: heron rose out of a red osier-bed below them, circling as though
he kept time to the outcry. Swallow quivered and swished his
glorious tail. They stopped together on the same note.
A hoarse shout answered them across the bare woods.
'That's old Hobden,'said Una.
'Small blame to him. It is in his blood,' said Puck. 'Did your
beaters cry so, Sir Richard?'
'My faith, they forgot all else. (Steady, Swallow, steady!) They
forgot where the King and his people waited to shoot. They
followed the deer to the very edge of the open till the first flight of
wild arrows from the stands flew fair over them.
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