| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: by something else. When you leave her you say to yourself: She
certainly has superior ideas! And you believe it all the more because
she will have sounded your heart with a delicate touch, and have asked
you your secrets; she affects ignorance, to learn everything; there
are some things she never knows, not even when she knows them. You
alone will be uneasy, you will know nothing of the state of her heart.
The great ladies of old flaunted their love-affairs, with newspapers
and advertisements; in these days the lady has her little passion
neatly ruled like a sheet of music with its crotchets and quavers and
minims, its rests, its pauses, its sharps to sign the key. A mere weak
women, she is anxious not to compromise her love, or her husband, or
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: marke me?
Nur. I will tell her sir, that you do protest, which as I
take it, is a Gentleman-like offer
Rom. Bid her deuise some meanes to come to shrift this
afternoone,
And there she shall at Frier Lawrence Cell
Be shriu'd and married: here is for thy paines
Nur. No truly sir not a penny
Rom. Go too, I say you shall
Nur. This afternoone sir? well she shall be there
Ro. And stay thou good Nurse behind the Abbey wall,
Romeo and Juliet |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: pleasure he had known at least since he had come from China.
He would keep the Baroness, for better or worse, to himself;
he had a feeling that he deserved to enjoy a monopoly of her,
for he was certainly the person who had most adequately gauged
her capacity for social intercourse. Before long it became
apparent to him that the Baroness was disposed to lay no tax
upon such a monopoly.
One day (he was sitting there again and playing with a fan)
she asked him to apologize, should the occasion present itself,
to certain people in Boston for her not having returned their calls.
"There are half a dozen places," she said; "a formidable list.
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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 In the Cage by Henry James: Business quickened, it seemed, toward five, as if the town did wake
up; she had therefore more to do, and she went through it with
little sharp stampings and jerkings: she made the crisp postal-
orders fairly snap while she breathed to herself "It's the last
day--the last day!" The last day of what? She couldn't have told.
All she knew now was that if she WERE out of the cage she wouldn't
in the least have minded, this time, its not yet being dark. She
would have gone straight toward Park Chambers and have hung about
there till no matter when. She would have waited, stayed, rung,
asked, have gone in, sat on the stairs. What the day was the last
of was probably, to her strained inner sense, the group of golden
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