| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: made him wince, and instead he caught her proffered hands
and stood looking at her across the length of her arms,
without attempting to bend them or to draw her closer. He
wanted her to know how her words had moved him; but his
thoughts were blurred by the rush of the same emotion that
possessed her, and his own words came with an effort.
He ended by giving her back a laugh as frank as her own, and
declaring, as he dropped her hands: "All that and more too--
you'll see!"
VIII
All day, since the late reluctant dawn, the rain had come
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: live where I do not see her.
"I know what you think," he said, turning upon her. "You think I am mad;
you think I am going to see whether she will not like me! I am not so
foolish. I should have known at first she never could suffer me. Who am
I, what am I, that she should look at me? It was right that she left me;
right that she should not look at me. If any one says it is not, it is a
lie! I am not going to speak to her," he added--"only to see her; only to
stand sometimes in a place where she has stood before."
Chapter 2.XI. An Unfinished Letter.
Gregory Rose had been gone seven months. Em sat alone on a white sheepskin
before the fire.
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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 Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: God in three, one nature, one kingdom, one power, one glory, one
substance, distinct in persons, and so only distinct. One is the
Father, whose property it is not to have been begotten; one is
the only-begotten Son, and his property it is to have been
begotten; and one is the Holy Ghost, and his property it is that
he proceedeth. Thus illuminated by that light, which is the
Father, with that light, which is the Son, in that light, which
is the Holy Ghost, we glorify one Godhead in three persons. And
he is one very and only God, known in the Trinity: for of him and
through him, and unto him are all things.
"By his grace also, I came to know thy ease, and was sent to
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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 Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: his new happiness to allow him to judge of the landlady, or to reflect
on the limits which he ought to impose on their daily intercourse.
Mademoiselle Gamard, seen from afar and through the prism of those
material felicities which the vicar dreamed of enjoying in her house,
seemed to him a perfect being, a faultless Christian, essentially
charitable, the woman of the Gospel, the wise virgin, adorned by all
those humble and modest virtues which shed celestial fragrance upon
life.
So, with the enthusiasm of one who attains an object long desired,
with the candor of a child, and the blundering foolishness of an old
man utterly without worldly experience, he fell into the life of
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