The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: soiled his lips with slang - a thing he loathed. We were both
Roberts; and as we took our places at table, he addressed me with a
twinkle: "We are just what you would call two bob." He offered me
port, I remember, as the proper milk of youth; spoke of "twenty-
shilling notes"; and throughout the meal was full of old-world
pleasantry and quaintness, like an ancient boy on a holiday. But
what I recall chiefly was his confession that he had never read
OTHELLO to an end. Shakespeare was his continual study. He loved
nothing better than to display his knowledge and memory by adducing
parallel passages from Shakespeare, passages where the same word
was employed, or the same idea differently treated. But OTHELLO
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: the thunder clattering overhead, and the lightning spurting like
water from a sluice, all ways at once. There was no danger, of
course, unless the horses broke loose. I was standing with my head
downward and my hands over my mouth, hearing the trees thrashing
each other. I could not see who was next me till the flashes came.
Then I found that I was packed near Saumarez and the eldest Miss
Copleigh, with my own horse just in front of me. I recognized the
eldest Miss Copleigh, because she had a pagri round her helmet, and
the younger had not. All the electricity in the air had gone into
my body and I was quivering and tingling from head to foot--exactly
as a corn shoots and tingles before rain. It was a grand storm.
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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 Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: as possible, you ask her permission to share my repast."
"Will she permit it?"
"What inconvenience can it be?"
"Oh, delightful! In this way we shall not be separated for an instant."
"Well, go down to her, then, to make your request. I feel my head a
little confused; I will take a turn in the garden."
"Go and where shall I find you?"
"Here, in an hour."
"Here, in an hour. Oh, you are so kind, and I am so grateful!"
"How can I avoid interesting myself for one who is so beautiful and so
amiable? Are you not the beloved of one of my best friends?"
 The Three Musketeers |
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 Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: guests echoed from the court-yard. The two notaries had dined with the
bridal pair and their mother. Mathias's head-clerk, whose business it
was to receive the signatures of the guests during the evening (taking
due care that the contract was not surreptitiously read by the
signers), was also present at the dinner.
No bridal toilet was ever comparable with that of Natalie, whose
beauty, decked with laces and satin, her hair coquettishly falling in
a myriad of curls about her throat, resembled that of a flower encased
in its foliage. Madame Evangelista, robed in a gown of cherry velvet,
a color judiciously chosen to heighten the brilliancy of her skin and
her black hair and eyes, glowed with the beauty of a woman at forty,
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