| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: broad faces were there, with prominent brows and venerable beards,
which fill us with a sort of pious respect for our ancestors when we
see their portraits from the Middle Ages. Lean faces, too, with
burning, sunken eyes, under bald heads yellow from the labors of
futile scholasticism, contrasted with young and eager countenances,
grave faces, warlike faces, and the ruddy cheeks of the financial
class.
These lectures, dissertations, theses, sustained by the brightest
geniuses of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, roused our
forefathers to enthusiasm. They were to them their bull-fights, their
Italian opera, their tragedy, their dancers; in short, all their
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: Then, if the sea sleeps, it dreams of all these,--faintly,
weirdly,--shadowing them even to the verge of heaven.
Beautiful, too, are those white phantasmagoria which, at the
approach of equinoctial days, mark the coming of the winds. Over
the rim of the sea a bright cloud gently pushes up its head. It
rises; and others rise with it, to right and left--slowly at
first; then more swiftly. All are brilliantly white and
flocculent, like loose new cotton. Gradually they mount in
enormous line high above the Gulf, rolling and wreathing into an
arch that expands and advances,--bending from horizon to horizon.
A clear, cold breath accompanies its coming. Reaching 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 The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: after two years there, on the run from morning till night, she married her
husband. He was a baker.
"A baker, Mrs. Parker!" the literary gentleman would say. For occasionally
he laid aside his tomes and lent an ear, at least, to this product called
Life. "It must be rather nice to be married to a baker!"
Mrs. Parker didn't look so sure.
"Such a clean trade," said the gentleman.
Mrs. Parker didn't look convinced.
"And didn't you like handing the new loaves to the customers?"
"Well, sir," said Mrs. Parker, "I wasn't in the shop above a great deal.
We had thirteen little ones and buried seven of them. If it wasn't the
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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 The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: heart would surely disavow. Josephine knew her husband well enough to
be certain that he would never forgive himself for having made his
Pepita less than happy during several months.
She kept silence therefore, and felt a sort of joy in thus suffering
by him for him: her passion had a tinge of that Spanish piety which
allows no separation between religion and love, and believes in no
sentiment without suffering. She waited for the return of her
husband's affection, saying daily to herself, "To-morrow it may come,"
--treating her happiness as though it were an absent friend.
During this stage of her secret distress, she conceived her last
child. Horrible crisis, which revealed a future of anguish! In the
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