| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: be admitted, of a rather jealous disposition, and was sometimes
apt to visit on her lover's head her indignation at the marks
of what Alphonse would have called the 'distinguished consideration'
with which her royal sister favoured him. Then the enforced
secrecy of his relation to Nyleptha prevented Curtis from taking
some opportunity of putting a stop, or trying to put a stop,
to this false condition of affairs, by telling Sorais, in a casual
but confidential way, that he was going to marry her sister.
A third sting in Sir Henry's honey was that he knew that Good
was honestly and sincerely attached to the ominous-looking but
most attractive Lady of the Night. Indeed, poor Bougwan was
Allan Quatermain |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: had been one of rather exceptional intellectual gifts, who wrote
fine-sounding essays, which Edna admired and strove to imitate; and
with her she talked and glowed over the English classics, and
sometimes held religious and political controversies.
Edna often wondered at one propensity which sometimes had
inwardly disturbed her without causing any outward show or
manifestation on her part. At a very early age--perhaps it was
when she traversed the ocean of waving grass--she remembered that
she had been passionately enamored of a dignified and sad-eyed
cavalry officer who visited her father in Kentucky. She could not
leave his presence when he was there, nor remove her eyes from his face,
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: prospects, that it can scarcely be understood without some sketch of
her antecedent career.
Sancerre at that time could boast of a Superior Woman, long misprized
indeed, but now, about 1836, enjoying a pretty extensive local
reputation. This, too, was the period at which two Sancerrois in Paris
were attaining, each in his own line, to the highest degree of glory
for one, and of fashion for the other. Etienne Lousteau, a writer in
reviews, signed his name to contributions to a paper that had eight
thousand subscribers; and Bianchon, already chief physician to a
hospital, Officer of the Legion of Honor, and member of the Academy of
Sciences, had just been made a professor.
The Muse of the Department |
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 Euthydemus by Plato: induced by Socrates to confess that 'he does not know the good to be
unjust.' Socrates appeals to his brother Euthydemus; at the same time he
acknowledges that he cannot, like Heracles, fight against a Hydra, and even
Heracles, on the approach of a second monster, called upon his nephew
Iolaus to help. Dionysodorus rejoins that Iolaus was no more the nephew of
Heracles than of Socrates. For a nephew is a nephew, and a brother is a
brother, and a father is a father, not of one man only, but of all; nor of
men only, but of dogs and sea-monsters. Ctesippus makes merry with the
consequences which follow: 'Much good has your father got out of the
wisdom of his puppies.'
'But,' says Euthydemus, unabashed, 'nobody wants much good.' Medicine is a
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