| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: every detail of her person and her dress, hoping to dislodge the
insane and ridiculous fancy that had taken up an abode in his brain;
but he presently found in his examination a keener pleasure than he
had felt only the day before in gazing at the perfect shape of a woman
he loved, as she took her bath. Now and again, the unknown fair,
bending her head, gave him a look like that of a kid tethered with its
head to the ground, and finding herself still the object of his
pursuit, she hurried on as if to fly. Nevertheless, each time that a
block of carriages, or any other delay, brought Andrea to her side, he
saw her turn away from his gaze without any signs of annoyance. These
signals of restrained feelings spurred the frenzied dreams that had
Gambara |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: and holding prisoners immobile. Then the infantry will follow to
gather in the sheaves. Multitudinously produced and--I write it
with a defiant eye on Colonel Newcome--/properly handled/,
these land ironclads are going to do very great things in
shortening the war, in pursuit, in breaking up the retreating
enemy. Given the air ascendancy, and I am utterly unable to
imagine any way of conclusively stopping or even greatly delaying
an offensive thus equipped.
2
The young of even the most horrible beasts have something piquant
and engaging about them, and so I suppose it is in the way of
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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 The Odyssey by Homer: sake so many, both Argives and Trojans, were in heaven's wisdom
doomed to suffer. Menelaus asked me what it was that had
brought me to Lacedaemon, and I told him the whole truth,
whereon he said, 'So, then, these cowards would usurp a brave
man's bed? A hind might as well lay her new-born young in the
lair of a lion, and then go off to feed in the forest or in some
grassy dell. The lion, when he comes back to his lair, will make
short work with the pair of them, and so will Ulysses with these
suitors. By father Jove, Minerva, and Apollo, if Ulysses is
still the man that he was when he wrestled with Philomeleides in
Lesbos, and threw him so heavily that all the Greeks cheered
The Odyssey |
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 Little Britain by Washington Irving: when Old Lamb had made money enough to shut up shop, and
put his name on a brass plate on his door. In an evil hour,
however, one of the Miss Lambs had the honor of being a lady
in attendance on the Lady Mayoress, at her grand annual ball,
on which occasion she wore three towering ostrich feathers on
her head. The family never got over it; they were immediately
smitten with a passion for high life; set up a one-horse
carriage,
put a bit of gold lace round the errand boy's hat, and have been
the talk and detestation of the whole neighborhood ever since.
They could no longer be induced to play at Pope-Joan or blind-
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