| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: until they had built a narrow gauge railroad along the west shore
of the lotus lake in the Forbidden City, and the factories of
Europe had made two small cars and an engine on which he could
take the court ladies for a ride on this unusual merry-go-round.
The road and the cars and the engine were still there when I
visited the Forbidden City in 1901, but they were carried away to
Europe by some of the allies as precious bits of loot, before the
court returned.
Not long after he had heard of the railroads, he was told that
the foreigners also had "fire-wheel boats." Of course he wanted
some, and as I crossed the beautiful marble bridge that spans the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: Adam Czartoryski. The two classes are like fire and water; but why
complain of that? Such divisions are always to be found among exiles,
no matter of what nation they may be, or in what countries they take
refuge. They carry their countries and their hatreds with them. Two
French priests, who had emigrated to Brussels during the Revolution,
showed the utmost horror of each other, and when one of them was asked
why, he replied with a glance at his companion in misery: "Why?
because he's a Jansenist!" Dante would gladly have stabbed a Guelf had
he met him in exile. This explains the virulent attacks of the French
against the venerable Prince Adam Czartoryski, and the dislike shown
to the better class of Polish exiles by the shopkeeping Caesars and
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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 Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: clasping the shawl about her neck, Evelina poured out her story.
It was a tale of misery and humiliation so remote from the elder
sister's innocent experiences that much of it was hardly
intelligible to her. Evelina's dreadful familiarity with it all,
her fluency about things which Ann Eliza half-guessed and quickly
shuddered back from, seemed even more alien and terrible than
the actual tale she told. It was one thing--and heaven knew
it was bad enough!--to learn that one's sister's husband was a
drug-fiend; it was another, and much worse thing, to learn from
that sister's pallid lips what vileness lay behind the word.
Evelina, unconscious of any distress but her own, sat upright,
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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 Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: voice singing something or other about somebody or something evidently
pathetic. As his waning voice neared the end of the lines, a large woman,
crowned with an amazing wealth of blond hair, thrust rudely past Edna, trod
heavily on her toes, and shoved her contemptuously to the side. "Bloomin'
hamateur!" she hissed as she went past, and the next instant she was on the
stage, graciously bowing to the audience, while the small, dark man twirled
extravagantly about on his tiptoes.
"Hello, girls!"
This greeting, drawled with an inimitable vocal caress in every syllable,
close in her ear, caused Edna to give a startled little jump. A smooth-faced,
moon-faced young man was smiling at her good-naturedly. His "make-up" was
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