| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: quite unwonted hour of one in the morning. The perfect silence allowed
of his hearing before passing the house the lachrymose voice of the
old mother, and Caroline's even sadder tones, mingling with the swish
of a shower of sleet. He crept along as slowly as he could; and then,
at the risk of being taken up by the police, he stood still below the
window to hear the mother and daughter, while watching them through
the largest of the holes in the yellow muslin curtains, which were
eaten away by wear as a cabbage leaf is riddled by caterpillars. The
inquisitive stranger saw a sheet of paper on the table that stood
between the two work-frames, and on which stood the lamp and the
globes filled with water. He at once identified it as a writ. Madame
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: devexerat, passibus CC ab eo tumulo constituit. Item equites Ariovisti
pari intervallo constiterunt. Ariovistus ex equis ut conloquerentur et
praeter se denos ad conloquium adducerent postulavit. Ubi eo ventum est,
Caesar initio orationis sua senatusque in eum beneficia commemoravit, quod
rex appellatus esset a senatu, quod amicus, quod munera amplissime missa;
quam rem et paucis contigisse et pro magnis hominum officiis consuesse
tribui docebat; illum, cum neque aditum neque causam postulandi iustam
haberet, beneficio ac liberalitate sua ac senatus ea praemia consecutum.
Docebat etiam quam veteres quamque iustae causae necessitudinis ipsis cum
Haeduis intercederent, quae senatus consulta quotiens quamque honorifica
in eos facta essent, ut omni tempore totius Galliae principatum Haedui
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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 Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: turned to me, "you must rejoice, little stupid! It's a piece of
luck for you that God is sending him to us!"
After we had heard a detailed history of the Gundasovs, there
followed a fuss and bustle in the place such as I had been
accustomed to see only before Christmas and Easter. The sky above
and the water in the river were all that escaped; everything else
was subjected to a merciless cleansing, scrubbing, painting. If
the sky had been lower and smaller and the river had not flowed
so swiftly, they would have scoured them, too, with bath-brick
and rubbed them, too, with tow. Our walls were as white as snow,
but they were whitewashed; the floors were bright and shining,
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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 Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: hers, Mother Rigby told the scarecrow that it must go and play
its part in the great world, where not one man in a hundred, she
affirmed, was gifted with more real substance than itself. And,
that he might hold up his head with the best of them, she endowed
him, on the spot, with an unreckonable amount of wealth. It
consisted partly of a gold mine in Eldorado, and of ten thousand
shares in a broken bubble, and of half a million acres of
vineyard at the North Pole, and of a castle in the air, and a
chateau in Spain, together with all the rents and income
therefrom accruing. She further made over to him the cargo of a
certain ship, laden with salt of Cadiz, which she herself, by her
Mosses From An Old Manse |
