| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: little den up four pairs of stairs, and looking towards the back.
To this hermitage, with infinite trouble and complaint, a pair of
stout porters carried the Saratoga trunk. It is needless to
mention that Silas kept closely at their heels throughout the
ascent, and had his heart in his mouth at every corner. A single
false step, he reflected, and the box might go over the banisters
and land its fatal contents, plainly discovered, on the pavement of
the hall.
Arrived in the room, he sat down on the edge of his bed to recover
from the agony that he had just endured; but he had hardly taken
his position when he was recalled to a sense of his peril by the
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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 Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: forgotten, in a corner.
"What troubles thee, my darling?" asked the painter, becoming once
more a lover.
"Kill me!" she answered. "I should be infamous if I still loved thee,
for I despise thee. I admire thee; but thou hast filled me with
horror. I love, and yet already I hate thee."
While Poussin listened to Gillette, Frenhofer drew a green curtain
before his Catherine, with the grave composure of a jeweller locking
his drawers when he thinks that thieves are near him. He cast at the
two painters a look which was profoundly dissimulating, full of
contempt and suspicion; then, with convulsive haste, he silently
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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 Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: fallen? "Rise," they say, "wrestle again, till thy strength come
to thee." Even thus should it be with thee. For know that there
is nothing more tractable than the human soul. It needs but to
will, and the thing is done; the soul is set upon the right path:
as on the contrary it needs but to nod over the task, and all is
lost. For ruin and recovery alike are from within.
CLVII
It is the critical moment that shows the man. So when the
crisis is upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of
wrestlers, has matched you with a rough and stalwart antagonist.--"
To what end?" you ask. That you may prove the victor at the
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
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 The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: of them would be by your deaf-and-dumb sulks. I am fond of you.
But don't you go too far. This isn't the time for it. We ought to
be thinking of what we've got to do. And I can't let you go out
to-night, galloping off to your mother with some crazy tale or
other about me. I won't have it. Don't you make any mistake about
it: if you will have it that I killed the boy, then you've killed
him as much as I."
In sincerity of feeling and openness of statement, these words went
far beyond anything that had ever been said in this home, kept up
on the wages of a secret industry eked out by the sale of more or
less secret wares: the poor expedients devised by a mediocre
The Secret Agent |
