| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: The weeds were in the gravel path,
The owl was on the roof.
"He's gone afar, he'll come no more,"
The neighbors sadly say.
And so they batter in the door
To take his goods away.
Dead, pipe in mouth, the youngster lay,
Nut-brown in face and limb.
"That pipe's a lovely white," they say,
"But it has colored him!"
The moral there's small need to sing --
The Devil's Dictionary |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: which I begged him, if he should see the Master, to assure him his
next messenger would be attended to. But with all my haste I was
not in time to avert what was impending; the arrow had been drawn,
it must now fly. I could almost doubt the power of Providence (and
certainly His will) to stay the issue of events; and it is a
strange thought, how many of us had been storing up the elements of
this catastrophe, for how long a time, and with how blind an
ignorance of what we did.
From the coming of the Colonel's letter, I had a spyglass in my
room, began to drop questions to the tenant folk, and as there was
no great secrecy observed, and the freetrade (in our part) went by
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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 Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: every signal of untruth.
'I make a note of these words,' said the Prince gravely. 'You
assure me, your sovereign, that since the date of my departure
nothing has occurred of which you owe me an account.'
'I take your Highness, I take the Herr Doctor to witness,' cried
Greisengesang, 'that I have had no such expression.'
'Halt!' said the Prince; and then, after a pause: 'Herr
Greisengesang, you are an old man, and you served my father before
you served me,' he added. 'It consists neither with your dignity
nor mine that you should babble excuses and stumble possibly upon
untruths. Collect your thoughts; and then categorically inform me
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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 Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: naturalist who once explained the peculiar gait of old maids by
declaring that their joints were consolidating. When she walked her
movements were not equally distributed over her whole person, as they
are in other women, producing those graceful undulations which are so
attractive. She moved, so to speak, in a single block, seeming to
advance at each step like the statue of the Commendatore. When she
felt in good humour she was apt, like other old maids, to tell of the
chances she had had to marry, and of her fortunate discovery in time
of the want of means of her lovers,--proving, unconsciously, that her
worldly judgment was better than her heart.
This typical figure of the genus Old Maid was well framed by the
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