| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: fragile and so strong, so fair, so artless, pure, spotless, and whose
blue eyes allowed my gaze to sound it to the very depths of her heart
with adorable submissiveness. Never was there the slightest hesitancy
in her attitude, her look, or word; always white and fresh, and ready
for the Beloved like the Oriental Lily of the 'Song of Songs!' Ah! my
friends!" sadly exclaimed the Minister, grown young again, "a man must
hit his head very hard on the marble to dispel that poem!"
This cry of nature, finding an echo in the listeners, spurred the
curiosity he had excited in them with so much skill.
"Every morning, riding Sultan--the fine horse you sent me from
England," de Marsay went on, addressing Lord Dudley, "I rode past her
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: I
Hegel says somewhere that that great historic facts and personages recur
twice. He forgot to add: "Once as tragedy, and again as farce.
"Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the "Mountain" of
1848-51 for the "Mountain" of 1793-05, the Nephew for the Uncle. The
identical caricature marks also the conditions under which the second
edition of the eighteenth Brumaire is issued.
Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole
cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out
of such as he finds close at hand. The tradition of all past
generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living. At the
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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 Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: "It's bound to be all right," she said.
But her heart kept on sinking. What hotel should she go to? If
she told a cabman to drive to an hotel, any hotel, what would he
do--or say? He might drive to something dreadfully expensive,
and not at all the quiet sort of thing she required. Finally she
decided that even for an hotel she must look round, and that
meanwhile she would "book" her luggage at Waterloo. She told the
porter to take it to the booking-office, and it was only after a
disconcerting moment or so that she found she ought to have
directed him to go to the cloak-room. But that was soon put
right, and she walked out into London with a peculiar exaltation
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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 Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: about for some scheme of escape, but after the black
Mugambi had eluded their vigilance the Abyssinians
redoubled their precautions to prevent Werper following
the lead of the Negro.
For some time Werper entertained the idea of bribing
Abdul Mourak with a portion of the contents of the
pouch; but fearing that the man would demand all the
gems as the price of liberty, the Belgian, influenced
by avarice, sought another avenue from his dilemma.
It was then that there dawned upon him the possibility
of the success of a different course which would still
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |
