| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: For auditor- or see, to serve our turn,
Yonder Palaemon comes! In singing-bouts
I'll see you play the challenger no more.
DAMOETAS
Out then with what you have; I shall not shrink,
Nor budge for any man: only do you,
Neighbour Palaemon, with your whole heart's skill-
For it is no slight matter-play your part.
PALAEMON
Say on then, since on the greensward we sit,
And now is burgeoning both field and tree;
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: that I have forgotten, but because even now, after the lapse of
some seventy years, I can scarcely bear to write of it or to set
out its horrors fully. But of all that was wonderful about it
perhaps the most wonderful was that even to the last this
unfortunate lady should still have clung to her love for the
villain who, having deceived her by a false marriage, deserted her,
leaving her to such a doom. To what end can so holy a gift as this
great love of hers have been bestowed on such a man? None can say,
but so it was. Yet now that I think of it, there is one thing even
stranger than her faithfulness.
It will be remembered that when the fanatic priest struck her she
Montezuma's Daughter |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: guard. Such royal solicitude made the courtiers believe that the old
miser had bequeathed his property to Louis XI. When at home, the
torconnier went out but little; but the lords of the court paid him
frequent visits. He lent them money rather liberally, though
capricious in his manner of doing so. On certain days he refused to
give them a penny; the next day he would offer them large
sums,--always at high interest and on good security. A good Catholic,
he went regularly to the services, always attending the earliest mass
at Saint-Martin; and as he had purchased there, as elsewhere, a chapel
in perpetuity, he was separated even in church from other Christians.
A popular proverb of that day, long remembered in Tours, was the
|
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 Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: As there appeared no change in their drowsy relations, she
forgot all about it, and life was planless.
V
Idling on the porch of their summer cottage at the lake,
on afternoons when Kennicott was in town, when the water
was glazed and the whole air languid, she pictured a hundred
escapes: Fifth Avenue in a snow-storm, with limousines,
golden shops, a cathedral spire. A reed hut on fantastic piles
above the mud of a jungle river. A suite in Paris, immense
high grave rooms, with lambrequins and a balcony. The
Enchanted Mesa. An ancient stone mill in Maryland, at the turn
|
