| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: destructive, for they were few in number and the ranch was large.
On the other hand, Daylight could have taken in fully a dozen
horses to pasture, which would have earned him a dollar and a
half per head per month. But this he refused to do, because of
the devastation such close pasturing would produce.
Ferguson came over to celebrate the housewarming that followed
the achievement of the great stone fireplace. Daylight had
ridden across the valley more than once to confer with him about
the undertaking, and he was the only other present at the sacred
function of lighting the first fire. By removing a partition,
Daylight had thrown two rooms into one, and this was the big
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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 Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: inaccessible that the coast-guard seldom thought it necessary to pass
that way. To float in ether after floating on the wave!--ah! who would
not have floated on the future as I did! Why was I thinking? Whence
comes evil?--who knows! Ideas drop into our hearts or into our heads
without consulting us. No courtesan was ever more capricious nor more
imperious than conception is to artists; we must grasp it, like
fortune, by the hair when it comes.
Astride upon my thought, like Astolphe on his hippogriff, I was
galloping through worlds, suiting them to my fancy. Presently, as I
looked about me to find some omen for the bold productions my wild
imagination was urging me to undertake, a pretty cry, the cry of a
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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 A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: highest genius does not display genius at all times; if he did, he
would be like to God.
After four years of this life, with never a shock to the soul, nor a
word that produced the slightest discord in this sweet concert of
sentiment, the countess, feeling herself developed like a beautiful
plant in a fertile soil, caressed by the sun of a cloudless sky, awoke
to a sense of a new self. This crisis of her life, the subject of this
Scene, would be incomprehensible without certain explanations, which
may extenuate in the eyes of women the wrong-doing of this young
countess, a happy wife, a happy mother, who seems, at first sight,
inexcusable.
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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 Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: degrees; for he, lying folded double in his hole, will, with the help of
his tail, break all, unless you give him time to be wearied with pulling,
and so get him out by degrees, not pulling too hard.
And to commute for your patient hearing this long direction, I shall
next tell you, How to make this Eel a most excellent dish of meat.
First, wash him in water and salt; then pull off his skin below his vent
or navel, and not much further: having done that, take out his guts as
clean as you can, but wash him not: then give him three or four
scotches with a knife; and then put into his belly and those scotches,
sweet herbs, an anchovy, and a little nutmeg grated or cut very small,
and your herbs and anchovies must also be cut very small; and mixt
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