The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair, -
Ah! somehow life is bigger after all
Than any painted angel, could we see
The God that is within us! The old Greek serenity
Which curbs the passion of that level line
Of marble youths, who with untroubled eyes
And chastened limbs ride round Athena's shrine
And mirror her divine economies,
And balanced symmetry of what in man
Would else wage ceaseless warfare, - this at least within the span
Between our mother's kisses and the grave
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo: Seizing his coat and hat Jimmy dashed through the outer office
without instructing his astonished staff as to when he might
possibly return.
"Family troubles," said the secretary to himself as he
appropriated one of Jimmy's best cigars.
CHAPTER IV
LESS than half an hour later, Jimmy's taxi stopped in front of
the fashionable Sherwood Apartments where Zoie had elected to
live. Ascending toward the fifth floor he scanned the face of
the elevator boy expecting to find it particularly solemn because
of the tragedy that had doubtless taken place upstairs. He was
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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 Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none
If what parts can so remain.
Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supreme and stars of love;
As chorus to their tragic scene.
THRENOS.
Beauty, truth, and rarity.
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclos'd in cinders lie.
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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 Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: tapestry, torn from the walls of other apartments, had been
hastily and partially disposed around those of the chapel, and
mingled inconsistently with scutcheons and funeral emblems of the
dead, which they elsewhere exhibited. On each side of the stone
altar was a monument, the appearance of which formed an equally
strange contrast. On the one was the figure, in stone, of some
grim hermit, or monk, who had died in the odour of sanctity; he
was represented as recumbent, in his cowl and scapulaire, with
his face turned upward as in the act of devotion, and his hands
folded, from which his string of beads was dependent. On the
other side was a tomb, in the Italian taste, composed of the most
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