| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: here; was a great peace. The prima donna, with her
French, and her paint, and her pearls, and the
prizefighter with his slang, and his cauliflower ear, and
his diamonds, seemed creatures of another planet. My
eyes closed. A delicious sensation of warmth and drowsy
contentment stole over me.
"Do listen to the purring of that cat!" I murmured.
"Oh, newspapers have no place in this. This is peace and
rest."
Alma Pflugel leaned forward in her chair. "You--you
like it?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: and its sorrows, its virtues and its sins, its aspirations and its
failures, has been rushing out of eternity and into eternity again,
as Arjoon in the Bhagavad Gita beheld the race of men issuing from
Kreeshna's flaming mouth, and swallowed up in it again, "as the
crowds of insects swarm into the flame, as the homeless streams
leap down into the ocean bed," in an everlasting heart-pulse whose
blood is living souls - and all that while, and ages before that
mystery began, that humble coral, unnoticed on the dark sea-floor,
has been "continuing as it was at the beginning," and fulfilling
"the law which cannot be broken," while races and dynasties and
generations have been
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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 Parmenides by Plato: Again, one, as having the same relations, has no difference of relation,
and is therefore not unlike, and therefore like; or, as having different
relations, is different and unlike. Thus, one, as being the same and not
the same with itself and others--for both these reasons and for either of
them--is also like and unlike itself and the others. Again, how far can
one touch itself and the others? As existing in others, it touches the
others; and as existing in itself, touches only itself. But from another
point of view, that which touches another must be next in order of place;
one, therefore, must be next in order of place to itself, and would
therefore be two, and in two places. But one cannot be two, and therefore
cannot be in contact with itself. Nor again can one touch the other. Two
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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 Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: sketch to finish, played the part of mentor to the two young people,
who talked to each other chiefly in Corsican. The soldier related the
sufferings of the retreat from Moscow; for, at nineteen years of age,
he had made the passage of the Beresins, and was almost the last man
left of his regiment. He described, in words of fire, the great
disaster of Waterloo. His voice was music itself to the Italian girl.
Brought up as a Corsican, Ginevra was, in some sense, a child of
Nature; falseness was a thing unknown to her; she gave herself up
without reserve to her impressions; she acknowledged them, or, rather,
allowed them to be seen without the affectations of petty and
calculating coquetry, characteristic of Parisian girlhood. During this
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