| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: to their mountain, where they thrust the prisoner into a secret cave
and chained him to the rocky wall so that he could not escape.
"Ha, ha!" laughed the Daemons, rubbing their hands together with cruel
glee. "What will the children do now? How they will cry and scold
and storm when they find there are no toys in their stockings and no
gifts on their Christmas trees! And what a lot of punishment they
will receive from their parents, and how they will flock to our Caves
of Selfishness, and Envy, and Hatred, and Malice! We have done a
mighty clever thing, we Daemons of the Caves!"
Now it so chanced that on this Christmas Eve the good Santa Claus had
taken with him in his sleigh Nuter the Ryl, Peter the Knook, Kilter
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: women for the military became a frenzy, and was too consonant to the
Emperor's views for him to try to check it. The frequent calls to
arms, which gave every treaty concluded between Napoleon and the rest
of Europe the character of an armistice, left every passion open to a
termination as sudden as the decisions of the Commander-in-chief of
all these busbys, pelisses, and aiguillettes, which so fascinated the
fair sex. Hearts were as nomadic as the regiments. Between the first
and fifth bulletins from the Grand armee a woman might be in
succession mistress, wife, mother, and widow.
Was it the prospect of early widowhood, the hope of a jointure, or
that of bearing a name promised to history, which made the soldiers so
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: "Father, I dunnot understan' what it is, rightly. But stay with
me,--stay, father!"
"Yoh've a many frien's, Lo," he said, with a keen flash of
jealousy. "Ther' 's none like yoh,--none."
"Father, look here."
She put her misshapen head and scarred face down on his hand,
where he could see them. If it had ever hurt her to be as she
was, if she had ever compared herself bitterly with fair, beloved
women, she was glad now, and thankful, for every fault and
deformity that brought her nearer to him, and made her dearer.
"They're kind, but ther' 's not many loves me with true love,
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
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 Lesson of the Master by Henry James: about her to Miss Fancourt; though he reflected that a hundred
other people, on a hundred occasions, would have been sure to make
it. He got on with Ms. St. George, in short, better than he
expected; but this didn't prevent her suddenly becoming aware that
she was faint with fatigue and must take her way back to the house
by the shortest cut. She professed that she hadn't the strength of
a kitten and was a miserable wreck; a character he had been too
preoccupied to discern in her while he wondered in what sense she
could be held to have been the making of her husband. He had
arrived at a glimmering of the answer when she announced that she
must leave him, though this perception was of course provisional.
|
