| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: others' love-making; but the more it recedes from that period of
exuberance, and ceases to have love adventures of its own, the greater
become its hunger and thirst to hear about this delicious business which
it can no longer personally practice with the fluency of yore. It was for
this reason that we all yearned in our middle-aged way for the tale of
love which we expected from young Richard. He, on his part, repeated the
hope that by the time his turn to tell a story was reached we should be
tired of stories and prefer to spend the evening at the card tables or in
the music room.
We were a house party, no brief "week-end" affair, but a gathering whose
period for most of the guests covered a generous and leisurely ten days,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: off the road!'
'Well, pull up then, and I'll look for it,' said Nikita, and
jumping down lightly from the sledge and taking the whip from
under the straw, he went off to the left from his own side of
the sledge.
The snow was not deep that year, so that it was possible to
walk anywhere, but still in places it was knee-deep and got
into Nikita's boots. He went about feeling the ground with his
feet and the whip, but could not find the road anywhere.
'Well, how is it?' asked Vasili Andreevich when Nikita came
back to the sledge.
Master and Man |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: Aigues. This dismissal drove him into the ranks of the Liberal
opposition, where he became one of the chorus of the Left, a position
he soon after abandoned for an embassy. His successor, luckily for
Montcornet, was a son-in-law of the Marquis de Troisville, uncle of
the countess, the Comte de Casteran. He welcomed Montcornet as a
relation and begged him to continue his intimacy at the Prefecture.
After listening to the general's complaints the Comte de Casteran
invited the bishop, the attorney-general, the colonel of the
gendarmerie, counsellor Sarcus, and the general commanding the
division to meet him the next day at breakfast.
The attorney-general, Baron Bourlac (so famous in the Chanterie and
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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 Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum: one, and the third did not wait to be pounded with the pail, but
joined its fellows as quickly as its wheels would whirl.
The yellow hen gave a cackle of delight, and flying to a perch upon
Tiktok's shoulder, she said:
"Bravely done, my copper friend! and wisely thought of, too. Now we
are free from those ugly creatures."
But just then a large band of Wheelers rolled from the forest, and
relying upon their numbers to conquer, they advanced fiercely upon
Tiktok. Dorothy grabbed Billina in her arms and held her tight, and
the machine embraced the form of the little girl with his left arm,
the better to protect her. Then the Wheelers were upon them.
Ozma of Oz |
