| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: Rosedale she felt it in her power to create--she would at least
present an invulnerable front to her enemy.
She had to draw upon this thought, as upon some fiery stimulant,
to keep up her part in the scene toward which Rosedale
was too frankly tending. As she walked beside him, shrinking in
every nerve from the way in which his look and tone made free of
her, yet telling herself that this momentary endurance of his
mood was the price she must pay for her ultimate power over him,
she tried to calculate the exact point at which concession must
turn to resistance, and the price HE would have to pay be made
equally clear to him. But his dapper self-confidence seemed
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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 Second Home by Honore de Balzac: Yours affectionately."
So young Granville went to bed full of schemes, each fairer than the
last. Under the powerful protection of the High Chancellor, the Chief
Justice, and his mother's brother--one of the originators of the Code
--he was about to make a start in a coveted position before the
highest court of the Empire, and he already saw himself a member of
the bench whence Napoleon selected the chief functionaries of the
realm. He could also promise himself a fortune handsome enough to keep
up his rank, for which the slender income of five thousand francs from
an estate left him by his mother would be quite insufficient.
To crown his ambitious dreams with a vision of happiness, he called up
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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 Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: "Some Sunday night perhaps, then. Tea."
"Thank you." And so out, past the spare secretary, the
anxious-browed stenographer, the academic office boy, to the
hallway, the elevator, and finally the refuge of her own
orderly desk. Slosson was at lunch in one of the huge
restaurants provided for employees in the building across
the street. She sat there, very still, for some minutes;
for more minutes than she knew. Her hands were clasped
tightly on the desk, and her eyes stared ahead in a puzzled,
resentful, bewildered way. Something inside her was saying
over and over again:
Fanny Herself |
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 A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: painter, called in the argot of the studios a "rapin."
"Behave yourself, Mistigris," said his master, giving him the nickname
which the studio had no doubt bestowed upon him.
The master was a slight and pale young man, with extremely thick black
hair, worn in a disorder that was actually fantastic. But this
abundant mass of hair seemed necessary to an enormous head, whose vast
forehead proclaimed a precocious intellect. A strained and harassed
face, too original to be ugly, was hollowed as if this noticeable
young man suffered from some chronic malady, or from privations caused
by poverty (the most terrible of all chronic maladies), or from griefs
too recent to be forgotten. His clothing, analogous, with due
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