| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: "To keep your appointment with Count Timascheff."
"By Jove! I had forgotten all about it!" exclaimed Servadac. Then looking
at his watch, he cried, "What are you thinking of, Ben Zoof? It is
scarcely two o'clock."
"Two in the morning, or two in the afternoon?" asked Ben Zoof,
again regarding the sun.
Servadac raised his watch to his ear. "It is going," said he; "but, by all
the wines of Medoc, I am puzzled. Don't you see the sun is in the west?
It must be near setting."
"Setting, captain! Why, it is rising finely, like a conscript at the sound
of the reveille. It is considerably higher since we have been talking."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: feeling, but on duty.
There are faults which may yield in a wife to the stern lessons of
experience, or to a husband's warnings; but nothing can counteract
false ideas of religion. An eternity of happiness to be won, set in
the scale against worldly enjoyment, triumphs over everything and
makes every pang endurable. Is it not the apotheosis of egotism, of
Self beyond the grave? Thus even the Pope was censured at the tribunal
of the priest and the young devotee. To be always in the right is a
feeling which absorbs every other in these tyrannous souls.
For some time past a secret struggle had been going on between the
ideas of the husband and wife, and the young man was soon weary of a
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