| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: still retained a few pretensions, which, in well-behaved persons of
her condition, change, rather later, into strong personal self-esteem.
The canon saw plainly that to live comfortably with his landlady he
must pay her invariably the same attentions and be more infallible
than the pope himself. To compass this result, he allowed no points of
contact between himself and her except those that politeness demanded,
and those which necessarily exist between two persons living under the
same roof. Thus, though he and the Abbe Troubert took their regular
three meals a day, he avoided the family breakfast by inducing
Mademoiselle Gamard to send his coffee to his own room. He also
avoided the annoyance of supper by taking tea in the houses of friends
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: become tyrant of Athens, and if this seemed in your eyes a small and mean
thing, should add to it the dominion of all Hellas; and seeing that even
then you would not be satisfied unless you were ruler of the whole of
Europe, should promise, not only that, but, if you so desired, should
proclaim to all mankind in one and the same day that Alcibiades, son of
Cleinias, was tyrant:--in such a case, I imagine, you would depart full of
joy, as one who had obtained the greatest of goods.
ALCIBIADES: And not only I, Socrates, but any one else who should meet
with such luck.
SOCRATES: Yet you would not accept the dominion and lordship of all the
Hellenes and all the barbarians in exchange for your life?
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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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: have admitted him to the last room of the four, the room without
other approach or egress, had it not, to his intimate conviction,
been closed SINCE his former visitation, the matter probably of a
quarter of an hour before. He stared with all his eyes at the
wonder of the fact, arrested again where he stood and again holding
his breath while he sounded his sense. Surely it had been
SUBSEQUENTLY closed - that is it had been on his previous passage
indubitably open!
He took it full in the face that something had happened between -
that he couldn't have noticed before (by which he meant on his
original tour of all the rooms that evening) that such a barrier
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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 Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: As Master Harry, who had no great stomach for such a combat, and
no very particular interest in the quarrel, was making for the
door, a little Portuguese, as withered and as nimble as an ape,
came ducking under the table and plunged at his stomach with a
great long knife, which, had it effected its object, would surely
have ended his adventures then and there. Finding himself in such
danger, Master Harry snatched up a heavy chair, and, flinging it
at his enemy, who was preparing for another attack, he fairly ran
for it out of the door, expecting every instant to feel the
thrust of the blade betwixt his ribs.
A considerable crowd had gathered outside, and others, hearing
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
