| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: soon see an honest emulation among the married women, which of
them could bring the fattest child to the market. Men would
become as fond of their wives, during the time of their
pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in
calf, or sow when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or
kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a
miscarriage.
Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the
addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of
barrel'd beef: the propagation of swine's flesh, and improvement
in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the
A Modest Proposal |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: taupe over one hip, a coral comb surmounted the
shining waves of Viola's hair. Viola was an ash-
blonde, her complexion was as roses, and the corals
were ideal for her. As Jane regarded her friend's
beauty, however, the fact that Viola was not young,
that she was as old as herself, hid it and overshad-
owed it.
"Well, Jane, don't you think I look well in the
corals, after all?" asked Viola, and there was some-
thing pitiful in her voice.
When a man or a woman holds fast to youth, even
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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 In the Cage by Henry James: numerous ways in which the establishment kept its finger on the
pulse of fashion and fell into the rhythm of the larger life. It
had something to do, one day, with the particular flare of
importance of an arriving customer, a lady whose meals were
apparently irregular, yet whom she was destined, she afterwards
found, not to forget. The girl was blasee; nothing could belong
more, as she perfectly knew, to the intense publicity of her
profession; but she had a whimsical mind and wonderful nerves; she
was subject, in short, to sudden flickers of antipathy and
sympathy, red gleams in the grey, fitful needs to notice and to
"care," odd caprices of curiosity. She had a friend who had
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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 Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: her illusions. She showed the pawn-tickets of the Mont-de-Piete to
prove the risks her business ran; declared that she did not know how
to meet the "end of the month"; she was robbed, she said,--ROBBED.
The two artists looked at each other on hearing that expression, which
seemed exaggerated.
"Look here, my sons, I'll show you how we are DONE. It is not about
myself, but about my opposite neighbour, Madame Mahuchet, a ladies'
shoemaker. I had loaned money to a countess, a woman who has too many
passions for her means,--lives in a fine apartment filled with
splendid furniture, and makes, as we say, a devil of a show with her
high and mighty airs. She owed three hundred francs to her shoemaker,
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