| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: his dreadful tools. "The moll is a beauty; she is well informed, and
stands by her mates, and a first-rate hand. Yes, la Gonore has made a
new man of you! What a flat you must be to risk your nut when you have
a trip like her at home! You noodle; you should have set up some
respectable little shop and lived quietly.--And what does she do?"
"She is settled in the Rue Sainte-Barbe, managing a house----"
"And she is to be your legatee? Ah, my dear boy, this is what such
sluts bring us to when we are such fools as to love them."
"Yes, but don't you give her anything till I am done for."
"It is a sacred trust," said Jacques Collin very seriously.
"And nothing to the pals?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: "I sat musing some time longer; then, throwing my cloak around
me, prepared for sleep on a sopha. And, so fortunate seemed my
deliverance, so sacred the pleasure of being thus wrapped up in
myself, that I slept profoundly, and woke with a mind composed to
encounter the struggles of the day. Mr. Venables did not wake till
some hours after; and then he came to me half-dressed, yawning and
stretching, with haggard eyes, as if he scarcely recollected what
had passed the preceding evening. He fixed his eyes on me for a
moment, then, calling me a fool, asked 'How long I intended to
continue this pretty farce? For his part, he was devilish sick of
it; but this was the plague of marrying women who pretended to know
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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 Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: young bloods of the country-side congregated and drank deep on a
percentage of the expense, so that he was left gainer who should have
drunk the most. Archie had no great mind to this diversion, but he took
it like a duty laid upon him, went with a decent regularity, did his
manfullest with the liquor, held up his head in the local jests, and got
home again and was able to put up his horse, to the admiration of
Kirstie and the lass that helped her. He dined at Driffel, supped at
Windielaws. He went to the new year's ball at Huntsfield and was made
welcome, and thereafter rode to hounds with my Lord Muirfell, upon whose
name, as that of a legitimate Lord of Parliament, in a work so full of
Lords of Session, my pen should pause reverently. Yet the same fate
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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 Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: `It may--if it chooses,' said Tweedledee: `we've no
objection. Contrariwise.'
`Selfish things!' thought Alice, and she was just going to say
`Good-night' and leave them, when Tweedledum sprang out from
under the umbrella and seized her by the wrist.
`Do you see THAT?' he said, in a voice choking with passion,
and his eyes grew large and yellow all in a moment, as he pointed
with a trembling finger at a small white thing lying under the
tree.
`It's only a rattle,' Alice said, after a careful examination
of the little white thing. `Not a rattleSNAKE, you know,' she
Through the Looking-Glass |
