| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Love and Friendship by Jane Austen: unmerited, and scandalous Death. Can any one if he reflects but
for a moment on this blot, this everlasting blot upon their
understanding and their Character, allow any praise to Lord
Burleigh or Sir Francis Walsingham? Oh! what must this
bewitching Princess whose only freind was then the Duke of
Norfolk, and whose only ones now Mr Whitaker, Mrs Lefroy, Mrs
Knight and myself, who was abandoned by her son, confined by her
Cousin, abused, reproached and vilified by all, what must not her
most noble mind have suffered when informed that Elizabeth had
given orders for her Death! Yet she bore it with a most unshaken
fortitude, firm in her mind; constant in her Religion; and
Love and Friendship |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: more of a howling success, and he stole my sweet little girl, a
perfect darling--but you must have seen her at the opera; he got her
an engagement there. Your husband is not so well behaved as I am. I am
ruled as straight as a sheet of music-paper. He had dropped a good
deal of money on Jenny Cadine, who must have cost him near on thirty
thousand francs a year. Well, I can only tell you that he is ruining
himself outright for Josepha.
"Josepha, madame, is a Jewess. Her name is Mirah, the anagram of
Hiram, an Israelite mark that stamps her, for she was a foundling
picked up in Germany, and the inquiries I have made prove that she is
the illegitimate child of a rich Jew banker. The life of the theatre,
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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 What is Man? by Mark Twain: intentions in the entrails of birds, and this was patiently and
hopefully continued century after century, although the attempted
concealment never succeeded, in a single recorded instance. The
augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern child can read
coarse print. Roman history is full of the marvels of
interpretation which these extraordinary men performed. These
strange and wonderful achievements move our awe and compel our
admiration. Those men could pierce to the marrow of a mystery
instantly. If the Rosetta-stone idea had been introduced it
would have defeated them, but entrails had no embarrassments for
them. Entrails have gone out, now--entrails and dreams. It was
What is Man? |
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 American by Henry James: She said very tender things. "I take no pleasure in you.
You never give me a chance to scold you, to correct you.
I bargained for that, I expected to enjoy it. But you
won't do anything dreadful; you are dismally inoffensive.
It is very stupid; there is no excitement for me; I might
as well be marrying some one else."
"I am afraid it's the worst I can do," Newman would say in answer
to this. "Kindly overlook the deficiency." He assured her that he,
at least, would never scold her; she was perfectly satisfactory.
"If you only knew," he said, "how exactly you are what I coveted!
And I am beginning to understand why I coveted it;
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