| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: physical and mental forces that were being exerted to bring them for a
trifling toll across the channel. So far from pitying the rowers'
distress, they pointed out the men's faces to each other, and laughed
at the grotesque expressions on the faces of the crew who were
straining every muscle; but in the fore part of the boat the soldier,
the peasant, and the old beggar woman watched the sailors with the
sympathy naturally felt by toilers who live by the sweat of their brow
and know the rough struggle, the strenuous excitement of effort. These
folk, moreover, whose lives were spent in the open air, had all seen
the warnings of danger in the sky, and their faces were grave. The
young mother rocked her child, singing an old hymn of the Church for a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: had arrived at the intimacy which thinks aloud, and were a touching
picture of two sisters, one cheerful and the other sad. The less happy
of the two, handsome, lively, high-spirited, and clever, seemed by her
manner to defy her painful situation; while the melancholy Celestine,
sweet and calm, and as equable as reason itself, might have been
supposed to have some secret grief. It was this contradiction,
perhaps, that added to their warm friendship. Each supplied the other
with what she lacked.
Seated in a little summer-house in the garden, which the speculator's
trowel had spared by some fancy of the builder's, who believed that he
was preserving these hundred feet square of earth for his own
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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 Virginian by Owen Wister: their still unmelted snows and their dull blue gulfs of pine.
From three canyons flowed three clear forks which began the
river. Their confluence was above the town a good two miles; it
looked but a few paces from up here, while each side the river
straggled the margin cottonwoods, like thin borders along a
garden walk. Over all this map hung silence like a harmony,
tremendous yet serene.
"How beautiful! how I love it!" whispered the girl" But, oh, how
big it is!" And she leaned against her lover for an instant. It
was her spirit seeking shelter. To-day, this vast beauty, this
primal calm, had in it for her something almost of dread. The
The Virginian |
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 The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: The fact that they were dining out that evening made it easy for
him to avoid Alexa till she came downstairs in her opera-cloak.
Mrs. Touchett, who was going to the same dinner, had offered to
call for her, and Glennard, refusing a precarious seat between the
ladies' draperies, followed on foot. The evening was
interminable. The reading at the Waldorf, at which all the women
had been present, had revived the discussion of the "Aubyn
Letters" and Glennard, hearing his wife questioned as to her
absence, felt himself miserably wishing that she had gone, rather
than that her staying away should have been remarked. He was
rapidly losing all sense of proportion where the "Letters" were
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