| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: to keep on striving to play the role of Gypsy Nan, because it was
these associates of Gypsy Nan who were at the bottom of the crime
of which she, Rhoda Gray, was held guilty, and because there was
always the hope that in this way, through confidences to a supposed
confederate, she could find the evidence that would convict those
actually guilty, and so prove her own innocence. But in holding to
the role of Gypsy Nan for the purpose of receiving those criminal
confidences, she had not thought of this - that upon her would rest
the moral responsibility of other crimes of which she would have
knowledge, and, least of all, that she should be faced with what
lay before her now, to-night, at the first contact with those who
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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 Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire.
Celestial as thou art, O do not love that wrong,
To sing heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue.
VI.
Scarce had the sun dried up the dewy morn,
And scarce the herd gone to the hedge for shade,
When Cytherea, all in love forlorn,
A longing tarriance for Adonis made
Under an osier growing by a brook,
A brook where Adon used to cool his spleen:
Hot was the day; she hotter that did look
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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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: sufficient reward is to verify his own existence and taste the
variety of human fate. To him, before the razor-edge of curiosity
is dulled, all that is not actual living and the hot chase of
experience wears a face of a disgusting dryness difficult to recall
in later days; or if there be any exception - and here destiny
steps in - it is in those moments when, wearied or surfeited of the
primary activity of the senses, he calls up before memory the image
of transacted pains and pleasures. Thus it is that such an one
shies from all cut-and-dry professions, and inclines insensibly
toward that career of art which consists only in the tasting and
recording of experience.
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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 Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: heir.
"Oho! is poor Don Juan really taking this seriously?" said the
Prince in Brambilla's ear.
"Well, his father was very good," she returned.
But Don Juan's night-thoughts had left such unmistakable traces
on his features, that the crew was awed into silence. The men
stood motionless. The women, with wine-parched lips and cheeks
marbled with kisses, knelt down and began a prayer. Don Juan
could scarce help trembling when he saw splendor and mirth and
laughter and song and youth and beauty and power bowed in
reverence before Death. But in those times, in that adorable
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