| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: wine had been sold at an enormous price, which she paid over to him,
and which he hid so cautiously that neither his wife nor the servant
who watched him had ever been able to discover its hiding-place.
The evening before Gaudissart reached Vouvray Madame Margaritis had
had more difficulty than usual in deceiving her husband, whose mind
happened to be uncommonly lucid.
"I really don't know how I shall get through to-morrow," she had said
to Madame Vernier. "Would you believe it, the good-man insists on
watching his two casks of wine. He has worried me so this whole day,
that I had to show him two full puncheons. Our neighbor, Pierre
Champlain, fortunately had two which he had not sold. I asked him to
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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 Straight Deal by Owen Wister: paint, if our democracy never looks at anything but the paint, God help
our democracy! Of course the Germans were agreeable to our soldiers after
the armistice!
Agreeable Germany!--who sank the Lusitania; who sank five thousand
British merchant ships with the loss of fifteen thousand men, women, and
children, all murdered at sea, without a chance for their lives; who
fired on boat-loads of the shipwrecked, who stood on her submarine and
laughed at the drowning passengers of the torpedoed Falaba.
Disagreeable England!--who sank five hundred German ships without
permitting a single life to be lost, who never fired a shot until
provision had been made for the safety of passengers and crews.
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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 Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: the undertaker. The hyena.
"One night," a doctor said, "last fall,
I and my comrades, four in all,
When visiting a graveyard stood
Within the shadow of a wall.
"While waiting for the moon to sink
We saw a wild hyena slink
About a new-made grave, and then
Begin to excavate its brink!
"Shocked by the horrid act, we made
A sally from our ambuscade,
The Devil's Dictionary |
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 Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: dressed, stealing downstairs, one step at a time, with his shoes in
one hand and a lamp in the other. Following him with her eyes, and
going down a little way herself to get the better of an intervening
angle, she beheld him thrust his head in at the parlour-door, draw
it back again with great swiftness, and immediately begin a retreat
upstairs with all possible expedition.
'Here's mysteries!' said the damsel, when she was safe in her own
room again, quite out of breath. 'Oh, gracious, here's mysteries!'
The prospect of finding anybody out in anything, would have kept
Miss Miggs awake under the influence of henbane. Presently, she
heard the step again, as she would have done if it had been that of
Barnaby Rudge |
