| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: demonstrated a score of times of legitimate defence, to kill women,
children, prisoners, unarmed men, was a crime,--a crime, look at it
how you will, that was execrable; those who ordered it, those who
consented to it, those who executed it are, to my mind, deserving of
the same reprobation."
I wish I could give you an idea, madame, of the tone and expression of
Sallenauve as he uttered this anathema. You know how his face is
transfigured when an ardent thought comes into his mind. The
assemblage was mute and gloomy. Evidently he had wounded their
sensibilities; but, under the curb of his powerful hand, it dared not
throw up its head.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: The driver murmured something in his beard.
"Stop here, this is your turn, down that street," Muller said a
few moments later, as the driver turned the other way.
"How do you know that?" asked the man, surprised.
"None of your business."
"This street will take us there just the same."
"Probably, but I prefer to go the way you went yesterday."
"Very well, it's all the same to me." They were silent again,
only the wind roared around them, and somewhere in the distance a
fog horn moaned.
It was now six o'clock. The snow threw out a mild light which could
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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 The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: regretting that a headache kept her from taking the afternoon
walk as she had promised. Also, to avoid meeting him, she did
without dinner, and spent the afternoon crying herself into a
headache that was real enough.
Anna Gates was no fool. While she made her few preparations for
dinner she repented bitterly what she had said to Harmony. It is
difficult for the sophistry of forty to remember and cherish the
innocence of twenty. For illusions it is apt to substitute facts,
the material for the spiritual, the body against the soul. Dr.
Gates, from her school of general practice, had come to view life
along physiological lines.
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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 Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: herself of coquetry, who shall blame Eugene if he did say softly in
his own mind: "What! that fortress, too?" So thinking, he posed in his
cravat. Young men may not be grasping but they like to get a new coin
in their collection.
Monsieur de Listomere seized the "Gazette de France," which he saw on
the mantelpiece, and carried it to a window, to obtain, by
journalistic help, an opinion of his own on the state of France.
A woman, even a prude, is never long embarrassed, however difficult
may be the position in which she finds herself; she seems always to
have on hand the fig-leaf which our mother Eve bequeathed to her.
Consequently, when Eugene, interpreting, in favor of his vanity, the
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