| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: feeling ill, and returned to her chimney-corner.
Such was the situation of affairs, and of people's minds in the house
of Madame de Dey, while along the road, between Paris and Cherbourg, a
young man in a brown jacket, called a "carmagnole," worn de rigueur at
that period, was making his way to Carentan. When drafts for the army
were first instituted, there was little or no discipline. The
requirements of the moment did not allow the Republic to equip its
soldiers immediately, and it was not an unusual thing to see the roads
covered with recruits, who were still wearing citizen's dress. These
young men either preceded or lagged behind their respective
battalions, according to their power of enduring the fatigues of a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: is simple retribution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or
aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre,
and sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its hot wings
into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am not such a hard-souled
being as to apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no
chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and to be taught
the lesson of self-government. I trust the tariff of Heaven has an
AD VALOREM scale for them - and all of us.
But to come back to poets and artists; - if they really are more
prone to the abuse of stimulants, - and I fear that this is true, -
the reason of it is only too clear. A man abandons himself to a
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: little white crib-bed, and she did not know why, and she did not
care much why. She did not get up and play in the sand while Sister
Mary Felice looked one hour at the little girls playing in the sand.
She scarcely wondered why she did not leave the crib-bed to sit on
the long gallery-step in a row with all the other little girls, all
with their feet on the gravel, and all eating the tiny cakes that
Sister Ignatius made, while Sister Angela sat on the bench under the
magnolia-tree and looked at the row of little girls.
If sometimes just at waking from fitful sleep in her crib-bed there
came to her just a thought, or a remembrance, of a great big soft
white cat that reached its paw out and softly touched her cheek, it
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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 Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: emotions, it makes the life of the soul blossom, it nourishes by its
solar power the finest inspirations and their great thoughts; the
first fruits in all things have a delicious savor. Amongst men love
becomes a passion; strength leads to abuse. Amongst old men it turns
to vice; impotence tends to extremes. Henri was at once an old man, a
man, and a youth. To afford him the feelings of a real love, he needed
like Lovelace, a Clarissa Harlowe. Without the magic lustre of that
unattainable pearl he could only have either passions rendered acute
by some Parisian vanity, or set determinations with himself to bring
such and such a woman to such and such a point of corruption, or else
adventures which stimulated his curiosity.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
