| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Sportsman by Xenophon: is established are ipso facto nigh unto good fortune."
It was through knowledge that they owed success against their foes to
such a training, that our own forefathers paid so careful a heed to
the young.[9] Though they had but a scant supply of fruits, it was an
immemorial custom "not to hinder[10] the hunter from hunting any of
earth's offspring"; and in addition, "not to hunt by night[11] within
many furlongs of the city," in order that the adepts in that art might
not rob the young lads of their game. They saw plainly that among the
many pleasures to which youth is prone, this one alone is productive
of the greatest blessings. In other words, it tends to make them sound
of soul and upright, being trained in the real world of actual
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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 Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: remarked the detective.
"And you are going to find out about Fellner?" smiled the
commissioner. "And this evening, too?"
"This very evening. If he is asleep I shall wake him up. That is
the best time to get at the truth about a man.
The commissioner sat down at his desk and wrote out the necessary
credentials for the detective. A few moments later Muller was in
the street. He left the notebook with the commissioner. It was
snowing heavily, and an icy north wind was howling through the
streets. Muller turned up the collar of his coat and walked on
quickly. It was just striking a quarter to twelve when he reached
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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 The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: self-interests. He had absolved excesses before committal, and broken
the only bonds which held these boorish men to the practice of
religious and social precepts. He had prostituted his sacred office to
political interests; but it must be said that, in these times of
revolution, every man made a weapon of whatever he possessed for the
benefit of his party, and the pacific cross of Jesus became as much an
instrument of war as the peasant's plough-share.
Seeing no one with whom to advise, Mademoiselle de Verneuil turned to
look for Francine, and was not a little astonished to see that she
shared in the rapt enthusiasm, and was devoutly saying her chaplet
over some beads which Galope-Chopine had probably given her during the
The Chouans |
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 On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined.
Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and
magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?
Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an
American government can make, or such as it can make a man
with its black arts--a mere shadow and reminiscence of
humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already,
as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniment,
though it may be,
"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
