| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: such scandals about; and those whose voices are loudest in
condemnation of the alleged misconduct of some slandered woman never
give a thought to the immediate provocation of the overt step. That
step many a woman only takes after she has been unjustly accused and
condemned, and Mme. de Bargeton was now on the verge of this anomalous
position.
The obstacles at the outset of a passion of this kind are alarming to
inexperience, and those in the way of the two lovers were very like
the bonds by which the population of Lilliput throttled Gulliver, a
multiplicity of nothings, which made all movement impossible, and
baffle the most vehement desires. Mme. de Bargeton, for instance, must
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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 Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And there was on me more than the old awe
That is the common genius of the dead.
I might as well have heard him: "Never mind;
If some of us were not so far behind,
The rest of us were not so far ahead."
The Rat
As often as he let himself be seen
We pitied him, or scorned him, or deplored
The inscrutable profusion of the Lord
Who shaped as one of us a thing so mean --
Who made him human when he might have been
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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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: the year before I took my degree, that I wanted to eat of the fruit
of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going
out into the world with that passion in my soul. And so, indeed, I
went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined
myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit
side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and
its gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering,
tears even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse
that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self-
abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head,
the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its
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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 Voice of the City by O. Henry: "I do not," said the girl; "I am not so inquisi-
tive. I come here to sit because here, only, can I be
tear the great, common, throbbing heart of hu-
manity. My part in life is cast where its beats are
never felt. Can you surmise why I spoke to you,
Mr. -- ?"
"Parkenstacker," supplied the young man. Then
be looked eager and hopeful.
"No," said the girl, holding up a slender finger,
and smiling slightly. "You would recognize it im-
mediately. It is impossible to keep one's name out of
The Voice of the City |
