| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: a sick man believe that a ball rises up from the oesophagus into
the larynx.
"In later life I have met people born to wealth who, never having
wanted for anything, had never even heard this problem in the
rule of three: A young man is to crime as a five-franc piece is
to X.--These gilded idiots say to me, 'Why did you get into debt?
Why did you involve yourself in such onerous obligations?' They
remind me of the princess who, on hearing that the people lacked
bread, said, 'Why do not they buy cakes?' I should like to see
one of these rich men, who complain that I charge too much for an
operation,--yes, I should like to see him alone in Paris without
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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: noses in this country. In his country he says all the people have such
noses, and the redder your nose is the higher you are. He's of the family
of the Queen Victoria, you know," said Tant Sannie, wakening up with her
subject; "and he doesn't think anything of governors and church elders and
such people; they are nothing to him. When his aunt with the dropsy dies
he'll have money enough to buy all the farms in this district."
"Oh!" said Trana. That certainly made a difference.
"Yes," said Tant Sannie; "and he's only forty-one, though you'd take him to
be sixty. And he told me last night the real reason of his baldness."
Tant Sannie then proceeded to relate how, at eighteen years of age,
Bonaparte had courted a fair young lady. How a deadly rival, jealous of
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