| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: And he who died with light of yesterday
Shall be no briefer time in death's No-more
Than he who perished months or years before.
BOOK IV
PROEM
I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,
Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,
Trodden by step of none before. I joy
To come on undefiled fountains there,
To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,
To seek for this my head a signal crown
Of The Nature of Things |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: where also Hardman was for the present staying, and sent word up
to his room that one of the audience who had admired very much
the artistic performance would like the pleasure of drinking a
glass of wine with Signor Cavellado if the latter would favor him
with his company in room seven. The Signor was graciously pleased
to accept, and followed his message of acceptance in person a few
minutes later.
Bucky remained quietly in the corner of the room back of the door
until the showman had entered, and while the latter was meeting
Collins he silently locked the door and pocketed the key.
The sheriff acknowledged Hardman's condescension brusquely 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 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: the world with complicated maladies upon them; that it would be
endless to give him a catalogue of all diseases incident to human
bodies, for they would not be fewer than five or six hundred,
spread over every limb and joint -in short, every part, external
and intestine, having diseases appropriated to itself. To remedy
which, there was a sort of people bred up among us in the
profession, or pretence, of curing the sick. And because I had
some skill in the faculty, I would, in gratitude to his honour,
let him know the whole mystery and method by which they proceed.
"Their fundamental is, that all diseases arise from repletion;
whence they conclude, that a great evacuation of the body is
Gulliver's Travels |
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 Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: rates! The willow plume looked prosperous, and she had a way of
making the plainest garments appear costly. Landladies looked at
the plume and the suit and heard the soft swish of silk beneath,
which marks only self-respect in the American woman but is
extravagance in Europe, and added to their regular terms until
poor Harmony's heart almost stood still. And then at last toward
evening she happened on a gloomy little pension near the corner
of the Alserstrasse, and it being dark and the plume not showing,
and the landlady missing the rustle owing to cotton in her ears
for earache, Harmony found terms that she could meet for a time.
A mean little room enough, but with a stove. The bed sagged in
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