| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: fairly well, and you?"
"Oh I as for me, I am as well as I could wish, but my mother is
very sick."
"Your mother?"
"Yes, my mother!"
"What's the matter with her?"
"She is going to turn up her toes, that's what's the matter with
her!"
The old woman took her hands out of the water and asked with
sudden sympathy: "Is she as bad as all that?"
"The doctor says she will not last till morning."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: since now it could lead only to fruitless slaughter that must
further shake the already sorely shaken prestige of Royalty.
And so the Court, growing momentarily wise again under the spur of
fear, preferred to temporize. Necker should be brought back yet
once again, the three orders should sit united as the National
Assembly demanded. It was the completest surrender of force to
force, the only argument. The King went alone to inform the
National Assembly of that eleventh-hour resolve, to the great
comfort of its members, who viewed with pain and alarm the dreadful
state of things in Paris. "No force but the force of reason and
argument" was their watchword, and it was so to continue for two
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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 Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: more frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred
might altogether have approved.
Ivanhoe distinguished himself in the service of
Richard, and was graced with farther marks of the
royal favour. He might have risen still higher,
but for the premature death of the heroic Cur-de-Lion,
before the Castle of Chaluz, near Limoges.
With the life of a generous, but rash and romantic
monarch, perished all the projects which his ambition
and his generosity had formed; to whom may
be applied, with a slight alteration, the lines composed
Ivanhoe |
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 Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: I discovered that my facial contortions were shifting my glasses
down my nose. Their fall would, of course, have exposed me, and as it
was they came to rest in an oblique position of by no means stable
equilibrium. In addition I had a slight cold, and an intermittent
desire to sneeze or sniff caused me inconvenience. In fact, quite
apart from the extreme anxiety of my position, my physical discomfort
became in a short time very considerable indeed. But I had to stay
there motionless, nevertheless."
After an interminable time, there began a chinking sound. This
deepened into a rhythm: chink, chink, chink--twenty-five chinks--
a rap on the writing-table, and a grunt from the owner of the stout
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