| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: to be spent in the search for him. The same formalities having been gone
through at the French consulate, and the palanquin having stopped at the hotel
for the luggage, which had been sent back there, they returned to the wharf.
It was now three o'clock; and pilot-boat No. 43, with its crew
on board, and its provisions stored away, was ready for departure.
The Tankadere was a neat little craft of twenty tons,
as gracefully built as if she were a racing yacht.
Her shining copper sheathing, her galvanised iron-work,
her deck, white as ivory, betrayed the pride taken by John Bunsby
in making her presentable. Her two masts leaned a trifle backward;
she carried brigantine, foresail, storm-jib, and standing-jib,
Around the World in 80 Days |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Sleep, little birdie, sleep! will she not sleep
Without her "little birdie?" well then, sleep,
And I will sing you "birdie."'
Saying this,
The woman half turn'd round from him she loved,
Left him one hand, and reaching thro' the night
Her other, found (for it was close beside)
And half embraced the basket cradle-head
With one soft arm, which, like the pliant bough
That moving moves the nest and nestling, sway'd
The cradle, while she sang this baby song.
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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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: harbored was a noble escaped from the Paris prisons. In short, they
all suspected the countess of being guilty of one of those
generosities, which the laws of the day called crimes, and punished on
the scaffold. The public prosecutor remarked in a low voice that it
would be best to say no more, but to do their best to save the poor
woman from the abyss toward which she was hurrying.
"If you talk about this affair," he said, "I shall be obliged to take
notice of it, and search her house, and THEN--"
He said no more, but all present understood what he meant.
The sincere friends of Madame de Dey were so alarmed about her, that
on the morning of the third day, the procureur-syndic of the commune
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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 A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: heard this, she allowed her cat, a splendid Angora, to sleep on the
bed. That trait gives you the woman. Du Bruel dared not say a word; he
was ordered to spread abroad that challenge in luxury, so that it
might reach the other. Tullia was very fond of this gift from the Duc
de Rhetore; but one day, five years after her marriage, she played
with her cat to such purpose that the coverlet--furbelows, flounces,
and all--was torn to shreds, and replaced by a sensible quilt, a quilt
that was a quilt, and not a symptom of the peculiar form of insanity
which drives these women to make up by an insensate luxury for the
childish days when they lived on raw apples, to quote the expression
of a journalist. The day when the bed-spread was torn to tatters
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