| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London: while the thick cloud-mass of the squall turned the brief tropic
twilight abruptly to night.
Quite unconsciously the brooding anxiety of the afternoon slipped
from Sheldon, and he felt strangely cheered at the sight of her
running up the steps laughing, face flushed, hair flying, her
breast heaving from the violence of her late exertions.
"Lovely, perfectly lovely--Pari-Sulay," she panted. "I shall buy
it. I'll write to the Commissioner to-night. And the site for the
bungalow--I've selected it already--is wonderful. You must come
over some day and advise me. You won't mind my staying here until
I can get settled? Wasn't that squall beautiful? And I suppose
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: great rains from the mountains, wash down such a quantity of red
sand as gives a tincture to the water: others tell us that the
sunbeams being reverberated from the red rocks, give the sea on
which they strike the appearance of that colour. Neither of these
accounts are satisfactory; the coasts are so scorched by the heat
that they are rather black than red; nor is the colour of this sea
much altered by the winds or rains. The notion generally received
is, that the coral found in such quantities at the bottom of the sea
might communicate this colour to the water: an account merely
chimerical. Coral is not to be found in all parts of this gulf, and
red coral in very few. Nor does this water in fact differ from that
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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 Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: talk about it later" [goes off].
Bixiou [alone in the corridor]. "That fish, for he's more a fish than
a bird, that Dutocq has a good idea in his head--I'm sure I don't know
where he stole it. If Baudoyer should succeed La Billardiere it would
be fun, more than fun--profit!" [Returns to the office.] "Gentlemen, I
announce glorious changes; papa La Billardiere is dead, really dead,--
no nonsense, word of honor! Godard is off on business for our
excellent chief Baudoyer, successor presumptive to the deceased."
[Minard, Desroys, and Colleville raise their heads in amazement; they
all lay down their pens, and Colleville blows his nose.] "Every one of
us is to be promoted! Colleville will be under-head-clerk at the very
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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 La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: played for an hour, while she--poor woman and happy mother--lay on a
long sofa in the summer-house, so placed that she could look out over
the soft, ever-changing country of Touraine, a land that you learn to
see afresh in all the thousand chance effects produced by daylight and
sky and the time of year.
The children scampered through the orchard, scrambled about the
terraces, chased the lizards, scarcely less nimble than they;
investigating flowers and seeds and insects, continually referring all
questions to their mother, running to and fro between the garden and
the summer-house. Children have no need of toys in the country,
everything amuses them.
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