| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: other's faces, they learned to know them well. Ere long it came to be,
as it were, a visit that the Unknown owed to Caroline; if by any
chance her Gentleman in Black went by without bestowing on her the
half-smile of his expressive lips, or the cordial glance of his brown
eyes, something was missing to her all day. She felt as an old man
does to whom the daily study of a newspaper is such an indispensable
pleasure that on the day after any great holiday he wanders about
quite lost, and seeking, as much out of vagueness as for want of
patience, the sheet by which he cheats an hour of life.
But these brief meetings had the charm of intimate friendliness, quite
as much for the stranger as for Caroline. The girl could no more hide
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: needful for each of these little communities to take care of its
own affairs, since there did not appear to be any central
authority which was naturally bound and easily enabled to provide
for them. Thus, the nature of the country, the manner in which
the British colonies were founded, the habits of the first
emigrants, in short everything, united to promote, in an
extraordinary degree, municipal and provincial liberties.
In the United States, therefore, the mass of the
institutions of the country is essentially republican; and in
order permanently to destroy the laws which form the basis of the
republic, it would be necessary to abolish all the laws at once.
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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 Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: all the forces in us are sweetly strung, and every chord vibrating
gives out full resonance.
And yet, this goodness of a noble nature increased Lucien's human
tendency to take himself as the centre of things. Do not all of us say
more or less, "L'Etat, c'est moi!" with Louis Quatorze? Lucien's
mother and sister had concentrated all their tenderness on him, David
was his devoted friend; he was accustomed to see the three making
every effort for him in secret, and consequently he had all the faults
of a spoiled eldest son. The noble is eaten up with the egoism which
their unselfishness was fostering in Lucien; and Mme. de Bargeton was
doing her best to develop the same fault by inciting him to forget all
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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 Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: they don't believe in divorce."
Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness
of the lie.
"When they do get married," continued Catherine, "they're going West to
live for a while until it blows over."
"It'd be more discreet to go to Europe."
"Oh, do you like Europe?" she exclaimed surprisingly. "I just got back
from Monte Carlo."
"Really."
"Just last year. I went over there with another girl." "Stay long?"
"No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of Marseilles.
The Great Gatsby |
