| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: here, he did not ask him, 'What have you done?' but he said:--
"'If you do not conduct yourself properly at home with your mother and
me, and go fishing, and behave like an honest man, you and I will have
a reckoning.'
"The crazy fellow, counting on his parent's folly, made a face; on
which Pierre struck him a blow which sent Jacques to his bed for six
weeks. The poor mother nearly died of grief. One night, as she was
fast asleep beside her husband, a noise awoke her; she rose up
quickly, and was stabbed in the arm with a knife. She cried out loud,
and when Pierre Cambremer struck a light and saw his wife wounded, he
thought it was the doing of robbers,--as if we ever had any in these
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: reassured, "but it made men of those who followed it. I see a
change for the worse even in our own town here; full of loafers
now, small and poor as 'tis, who once would have followed the sea,
every lazy soul of 'em. There is no occupation so fit for just
that class o' men who never get beyond the fo'cas'le. I view it,
in addition, that a community narrows down and grows dreadful
ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no
knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled
newspaper. In the old days, a good part o' the best men here knew
a hundred ports and something of the way folks lived in them. They
saw the world for themselves, and like's not their wives and
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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 Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: The ambidextrous Kings of Art;
And every mortal thing I do
Brings ringing money in the mart.
Hence, in the morning hour, the mead,
The forest and the stream perceive
Me wandering as the muses lead -
Or back returning in the eve.
Two muses like two maiden aunts,
The engraving and the singing muse,
Follow, through all my favourite haunts,
My devious traces in the dews.
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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 Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: the rights of society at large are naturally extended and
consolidated: in other words, men become less attached to private
rights at the very time at which it would be most necessary to
retain and to defend what little remains of them. It is
therefore most especially in the present democratic ages, that
the true friends of the liberty and the greatness of man ought
constantly to be on the alert to prevent the power of government
from lightly sacrificing the private rights of individuals to the
general execution of its designs. At such times no citizen is so
obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be
oppressed - no private rights are so unimportant that they can be
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