| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: waiting with the traditional wolf at the door. I've just
come from my lawyer, auntie, and, 'Please, ma'am, I
ain't got nothink 't all. Flowers, lady? Buttonhole,
gentleman? Pencils, sir, three for five, to help a poor
widow?' Do I do it nicely, auntie, or, as a bread-winner
accomplishment, were my lessons in elocution entirely
wasted?"
"Do be serious, my dear," said Aunt Ellen, letting her
paper fall to the floor, "long enough to tell me what you
mean. Colonel Beaupree's estate -- "
"Colonel Beaupree's estate," interrupted Octavia,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: much more beauty and dignity, the ancient place of the Princess
Martha. The golden dishes were set before her, and the famous
family emeralds--in accordance with the command of Prince Alexis--
gleamed among her dark hair and flashed around her milk-white
throat. Her beauty was of a kind so rare in Russia that it
silenced all question and bore down all rivalry. Every one
acknowledged that so lovely a creature had never before been seen.
"Faith, the boy has eyes!" the old Prince constantly repeated, as
he turned away from a new stare of admiration, down the table.
The guests noticed a change in the character of the entertainment.
The idiot, in his tow shirt, had been crammed to repletion in the
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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 Aesop's Fables by Aesop: and dig it up and gloat over his gains. A robber, who had noticed
this, went and dug up the gold and decamped with it. When the
Miser next came to gloat over his treasures, he found nothing but
the empty hole. He tore his hair, and raised such an outcry that
all the neighbours came around him, and he told them how he used
to come and visit his gold. "Did you ever take any of it out?"
asked one of them.
"Nay," said he, "I only came to look at it."
"Then come again and look at the hole," said a neighbour; "it
will do you just as much good."
Wealth unused might as well not exist.
Aesop's Fables |
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 Ursula by Honore de Balzac: Three nights later three violins, a flute, a guitar, and a hautboy
began another serenade. This time the musicians fled towards
Montargis, where there happened then to be a company of comic actors.
A loud and ringing voice called out as they left: "To the daughter of
the regimental bandsman Mirouet." By this means all Nemours came to
know the profession of Ursula's father, a secret the old doctor had
sedulously kept.
Savinien did not go to Montargis. He received in the course of the day
an anonymous letter containing a prophecy:--
"You will never marry Ursula. If you wish her to live, give her up
at once to a man who loves her more than you love her. He has made
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