| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: mind when one loves? So I was a slave when I should have sought to be
a tyrant. Those who know me may condemn me, but they will respect me
too. Pain has taught me that I must not lay myself open to this a
second time. I cannot understand how it is that I am living yet, after
the anguish of that first week of the most fearful crisis in a woman's
life. Only from three years of loneliness would it be possible to draw
strength to speak of that time as I am speaking now. Such agony,
monsieur, usually ends in death; but this--well, it was the agony of
death with no tomb to end it. Oh! I have known pain indeed!"
The Vicomtesse raised her beautiful eyes to the ceiling; and the
cornice, no doubt, received all the confidences which a stranger might
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: would be likely to have heard of. Cities, people of fashion, artists--the
whole of it was my element and my choice; and by-and-by I married, not
only where it was desirable, but where I loved. Then for the first time
Death laid his staff upon my enchantment, and I understood many things
that had been only words to me hitherto. To have been a husband for a
year, and a father for a moment, and in that moment to lose all--this
unblinded me. Looking back, it seemed to me that I had never done anything
except for myself all my days. I left the world. In due time I became a
priest and lived in my own country. But my worldly experience and my
secular education had given to my opinions a turn too liberal for the
place where my work was laid. I was soon advised concerning this by those
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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 Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: Sarajevo, 32
Scholarships, 170, 197
Science, 86, 109, 138 166 ff.,
189, 207
men of, 207
Self-interest, 125
Sharing, free, 96 ff., 195
Shelley, 173
Single Tax, 82
Slavery, 190
Socialism, passim--
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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 An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: called in the man to buy the words, he had not a copy of them left.
She was not the first nor the second who had been taken with the
song. There is something very pathetic in the love of the French
people, since the war, for dismal patriotic music-making. I have
watched a forester from Alsace while some one was singing 'LES
MALHEURS DE LA FRANCE,' at a baptismal party in the neighbourhood
of Fontainebleau. He arose from the table and took his son aside,
close by where I was standing. 'Listen, listen,' he said, bearing
on the boy's shoulder, 'and remember this, my son.' A little after
he went out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear him sobbing
in the darkness.
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