| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: him spoke of strength. He was broad-chested; constant activity had
made the muscles of his hands curiously firm and prominent. There was
the quick intelligence of a savage about his glances; he looked
resolute, fearless, and imperturbable, like a man accustomed to put
his life in peril, and whose physical and mental strength had been so
often tried by dangers of every kind, that he no longer felt any
doubts about himself. He wore a blouse that had suffered a good deal
from thorns and briars, and he had a pair of leather soles bound to
his feet by eel-skin thongs, and a pair of torn and tattered blue
linen breeches through which his legs were visible, red, wiry, hard,
and muscular as those of a stag.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: where I should be if it weren't for taking a flyer now and then.
The women all think--I mean Judy thinks--I've nothing to do but
to go down town once a month and cut off coupons, but the truth
is it takes a devilish lot of hard work to keep the machinery
running. Not that I ought to complain to-day, though," he went on
after a moment, "for I did a very neat stroke of business, thanks
to Stepney's friend Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily, I wish you'd
try to persuade Judy to be decently civil to that chap. He's
going to be rich enough to buy us all out one of these
days, and if she'd only ask him to dine now and then I could get
almost anything out of him. The man is mad to know the people who
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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 Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: hence, to be brought to bed of a bastard; a posthumous bastard as
it were, to which the quondam father can be no more than a dry
nurse.
This wonderful transformation is the instrument of nature, to
balance matters between the sexes. The cruelty of scornful
mistresses shall be return'd; the slighted maid shall grow into
an imperious gallant, and reward her undoer with a big belly, and
a bastard.
It is hardly possible to imagine the revolutions that this
wonderful phaenomenon will occasion over the face of the earth. I
long impatiently to see the proceedings of the Parliament of
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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 Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: "At length Godefroid discovered a great mystery in Malvina. Whenever
du Tillet knocked at the door, the live red that colored Malvina's
face said 'Ferdinand!' When the poor girl's eyes fell on that two-
footed tiger, they lighted up like a brazier fanned by a current of
air. When Ferdinand drew her away to the window or a side table, she
betrayed her secret infinite joy. It is a rare and wonderful thing to
see a woman so much in love that she loses her cunning to be strange,
and you can read her heart; as rare (dear me!) in Paris as the Singing
Flower in the Indies. But in spite of a friendship dating from the
d'Aldriggers' first appearance at the Nucingens', Ferdinand did not
marry Malvina. Our ferocious friend was not apparently jealous of
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