| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: myself, leaving you to your--happiness, and with--whom!--"
He did not end his sentence.
"Kill yourself!" she cried, flinging herself at his feet and clasping
them.
But he, wishing to escape the embrace, tried to shake her off,
dragging her in so doing toward the bed.
"Let me alone," he said.
"No, no, Jules!" she cried. "If you love me no longer I shall die. Do
you wish to know all?"
"Yes."
He took her, grasped her violently, and sat down on the edge of the
Ferragus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: "The peace with God." "The sense of sins forgiven." Methodists and
revivalists say the words, and the mocking world shoots out its lip, and
walks by smiling--"Hypocrite."
There are more fools and fewer hypocrites than the wise world dreams of.
The hypocrite is rare as icebergs in the tropics; the fool common as
buttercups beside a water-furrow: whether you go this way or that you
tread on him; you dare not look at your own reflection in the water but you
see one. There is no cant phrase, rotten with age, but it was the dress of
a living body; none but at heart it signifies a real bodily or mental
condition which some have passed through.
After hours and nights of frenzied fear of the supernatural desire to
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