| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: as their patron. Pure devotion, such as Modeste conceived it, without
money and without price, and more especially without hope, is rare.
Nevertheless there are Mennevals to be found, more perhaps in Paris
than elsewhere, men who value a life in the background with its
peaceful toil; these are the wandering Benedictines of our social
world, which offers them no other monastery. These brave, meek hearts
live, by their actions and in their hidden lives, the poetry that
poets utter. They are poets themselves in soul, in tenderness, in
their lonely vigils and meditations,--as truly poets as others of the
name on paper, who fatten in the fields of literature at so much a
verse; like Lord Byron, like all who live, alas, by ink, the
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: "I would make scenes for him, fine scenes!" cried Madame Guillaume,
interrupting her daughter. "How can you show any consideration to such
a man? In the first place, I don't like his drinking water only; it is
not wholesome. Why does he object to see a woman eating? What queer
notion is that! But he is mad. All you tell us about him is
impossible. A man cannot leave his home without a word, and never come
back for ten days. And then he tells you he has been to Dieppe to
paint the sea. As if any one painted the sea! He crams you with a pack
of tales that are too absurd."
Augustine opened her lips to defend her husband; but Madame Guillaume
enjoined silence with a wave of her hand, which she obeyed by a
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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 Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: this very night, if I can manage to steal into her
bedroom."
"You mustn't think about it, though," warned the
bird, "for she can read your thoughts whenever she
cares to do so. And do not forget, before you escape,
to take me with you. Once I am out of the power of the
Giantess, I may discover a way to save us all."
"We won't forget our fairy friend," promised the boy;
"but perhaps you can tell me how to get into the
bedroom."
"No," declared Polychrome, "I cannot advise you as to
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
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 Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: different parish of the infinite.
CHAPTER XI - PAN'S PIPES
THE world in which we live has been variously said and
sung by the most ingenious poets and philosophers: these
reducing it to formulae and chemical ingredients, those
striking the lyre in high-sounding measures for the handiwork
of God. What experience supplies is of a mingled tissue, and
the choosing mind has much to reject before it can get
together the materials of a theory. Dew and thunder,
destroying Atilla and the Spring lambkins, belong to an order
of contrasts which no repetition can assimilate. There is an
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