| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: be around when them marriage certificates fell due.
With about $4,000 between us we hit that bumptious little town off the
New Jersey coast they call New York.
If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-
on-the-Hudson. Cosmopolitan they call it. You bet. So's a piece of
fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull
their feet out of the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enough
for us"--that's what they sing.
There's enough Reubs walk down Broadway in one hour to buy up a week's
output of the factory in Augusta, Maine, that makes Knaughty
Knovelties and the little Phine Phum oroide gold finger ring that
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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 Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: shareholder in the newspapers, like Finot, one of my friends, the son
of a hatter, who now has thirty thousand francs income, and is going
to make himself a peer of France. When one thinks of that little
Popinot,--ah, mon Dieu! I forgot to tell you that Monsieur Popinot was
named minister of commerce yesterday. Why shouldn't I be ambitious
too? Ha! ha! I could easily pick up the jargon of those fellows who
talk in the chamber, and bluster with the rest of them. Now, listen to
me:--
"Gentlemen," he said, standing behind a chair, "the Press is neither a
tool nor an article of barter: it is, viewed under its political
aspects, an institution. We are bound, in virtue of our position as
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