| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: to bursting to pass for gentlemen, and high gentlemen who, one would
fancy, were dying to pass for men of low rank; the former raise
themselves by their ambition or by their virtues, the latter debase
themselves by their lack of spirit or by their vices; and one has need
of experience and discernment to distinguish these two kinds of
gentlemen, so much alike in name and so different in conduct."
"God bless me!" said the niece, "that you should know so much,
uncle- enough, if need be, to get up into a pulpit and go preach in
the streets -and yet that you should fall into a delusion so great and
a folly so manifest as to try to make yourself out vigorous when you
are old, strong when you are sickly, able to put straight what is
Don Quixote |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: Carley had climbed Mont Blanc and she had seen the Matterhorn, but they had
never struck such amaze and admiration from her as these twin peaks of her
native land.
"What mountains are those?" she asked a passer-by.
"San Francisco Peaks, ma'am," replied the man.
"Why, they can't be over a mile away!" she said.
"Eighteen miles, ma'am," he returned, with a grin. "Shore this Arizonie air
is deceivin'."
"How strange," murmured Carley. "It's not that way in the Adirondacks."
She was still gazing upward when a man approached her and said the stage
for Oak Creek Canyon would soon be ready to start, and he wanted to know if
The Call of the Canyon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: deeply," said Crevel, seating himself, "for it is frightful to see the
woman one loves weeping. All I can promise you, dear Adeline, is to do
nothing against your interests or your husband's. Only never send to
me for information. That is all."
"What is to be done?" cried Madame Hulot.
Up to now the Baroness had bravely faced the threefold torment which
this explanation inflicted on her; for she was wounded as a woman, as
a mother, and as a wife. In fact, so long as her son's father-in-law
was insolent and offensive, she had found the strength in her
resistance to the aggressive tradesman; but the sort of good-nature he
showed, in spite of his exasperation as a mortified adorer and as a
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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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: any mischief should spring out of any resolutions which the People has
passed in council, the People can readily shift the blame from its own
shoulders. "A handful of oligarchs[22] acting against the interests of
the People have ruined us." But if any good result ensue, they, the
People, at once take the credit of that to themselves.
[21] Reading {uph otououn adikeitai onomati upo ton oligon}, which I
suggest as a less violent emendation of this corrupt passage than
any I have seen; or, reading with Sauppe, {uph otou adikei
anomeitai apo ton oligon}, "the illegality lies at the door of."
[22] Or, "a few insignificant fellows."
In the same spirit it is not allowed to caricature on the comic
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