| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: manner and countenance, which prevented the Bishop of Tyre from
expressing strongly the displeasure he felt at this unceremonious
rebuke. When without the hut, he gazed upon Adonbec in silence
for several minutes before he could fix on the best manner to
renew the conversation. No locks were seen under the high bonnet
of the Arabian, which hid also part of a brow that seemed lofty
and expanded, smooth, and free from wrinkles, as were his cheeks,
where they were seen under the shade of his long beard. We have
elsewhere noticed the piercing quality of his dark eyes.
The prelate, struck with his apparent youth, at length broke a
pause, which the other seemed in no haste to interrupt, by
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: pale, and he stared at her blankly, like a deaf-and-dumb
man who was wondering what it was all about.
She took a swift step toward him, with stiffened arms
and eyes blazing.
"Don't look at me like that!" she cried, as though she
were in acute pain. "Curse me, or turn your back
on me, but don't look that way. Am I a woman to be
beaten? If I could show you -- here on my arms, and
on my back are scars -- and it has been more than a year
-- scars that he made in his brutal rages. A holy nun
would have risen and struck the fiend down. Yes, I
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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 Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: atheists believe--organized physical creations, so arithmetic, in the
employ of Number, organized the moral world. This numeration must be
absolute, like all else that is true in itself; but it is purely
relative, it does not exist absolutely, and no proof can be given of
its reality. In the first place, though Numeration is able to take
account of organized substances, it is powerless in relation to
unorganized forces, the ones being finite and the others infinite. The
man who can conceive the Infinite by his intelligence cannot deal with
it in its entirety; if he could, he would be God. Your Numeration,
applying to things finite and not to the Infinite, is therefore true
in relation to the details which you are able to perceive, and false
Seraphita |
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 Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: the schooner, his only thought being that the end could not be
far. He had heard of the suddenness of tropical squalls, but this
had come with the abruptness of a scene-shift at a play. The
schooner veered broad-on to the waves. It was the beginning of
the end--another roll to the leeward like the last and the Pacific
would come aboard.
"And you call yourselves sailor men! Are you going to drown like
rats on a plank?" A voice that Wilbur did not know went ringing
through that horrid shouting of wind and sea like the call of a
bugle. He turned to see Moran, the girl of the "Lady Letty,"
standing erect upon the quarterdeck, holding down the schooner's
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