| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: walked during the whole days. Lord Breadalbane, by the way, has
just been appointed Lord High Chamberlain to the Queen in place of
Lord Spencer. I am glad of this because we are brought often in
contact with the Lord Chamberlain, but it is very strange to me that
a man who lives like a king, and through whose dominions we
travelled a hundred miles from the German Ocean to the Atlantic, can
be Chamberlain to any Queen. These feudal subordinations we
republicans cannot understand. . . . We stopped at the little town
of Oban. After reading our letters and getting a dinner, we went
out just before sunset for a walk.
We wished much to see the ruins of Dunolly. We passed the porter's
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters: Our mother needs no tears:
Dry thine eyes, too; 'tis vain to keep
This causeless grief for years.
What though her brow be changed and cold,
Her sweet eyes closed for ever?
What though the stone--the darksome mould
Our mortal bodies sever?
What though her hand smooth ne'er again
Those silken locks of thine?
Nor, through long hours of future pain,
Her kind face o'er thee shine?
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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 Purse by Honore de Balzac: simply his double, a paler and poorer double, for there was
between them all the difference that lies between the first and
last impressions of a lithograph.
This speechless old man was a mystery to the painter, and always
remained a mystery. The Chevalier, for he was a Chevalier, did
not speak, nobody spoke to him. Was he a friend, a poor relation,
a man who followed at the old gallant's heels as a lady companion
does at an old lady's? Did he fill a place midway between a dog,
a parrot, and a friend? Had he saved his patron's fortune, or
only his life? Was he the Trim to another Captain Toby?
Elsewhere, as at the Baronne de Rouville's, he always piqued
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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 Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: over forty, and he was still reading the advertisements in the
papers and saving up. Then I heard he was married. Still with the
same object of buying a farm and having gooseberries, he married
an elderly and ugly widow without a trace of feeling for her,
simply because she had filthy lucre. He went on living frugally
after marrying her, and kept her short of food, while he put her
money in the bank in his name.
"Her first husband had been a postmaster, and with him she was
accustomed to pies and home-made wines, while with her second
husband she did not get enough black bread; she began to pine
away with this sort of life, and three years later she gave up
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