| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: "I'm doing it again: I don't seem to be able to help it. These are
Granger's that I have on now."
She threw back her head and laughed again, joyously, this time.
"Oh, it's so ridiculous," she said, "and you have never seen me when
I was not eating! It's too prosaic!"
"Which reminds me that the chicken is getting cold, and the ice
warm," I suggested. "At the time, I thought there could be no place
better than the farmhouse kitchen - but this is. I ordered all this
for something I want to say to you - the sea, the sand, the stars."
"How alliterative you are!" she said, trying to be flippant. "You
are not to say anything until I have had my supper. Look how the
The Man in Lower Ten |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: and almost silly beside her. And yet she had moments of repulsion
against her own act, moments in which she could not help admiring the
grandeur of such simplicity. This game of choicest coquetry attached
her, insensibly, to her slave. At last, however, Diane grew impatient
with an Epictetus of love; and when she thought she had trained him to
the utmost credulity, she set to work to tie a thicker bandage still
over his eyes.
CHAPTER IV
THE CONFESSION OF A PRETTY WOMAN
One evening Daniel found the princess thoughtful, one elbow resting on
a little table, her beautiful blond head bathed in light from the
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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 Master Key by L. Frank Baum: little room at the bottom of the tower.
When, at daylight, the boy sat up and rubbed his eyes, he said,
wearily: "Churches are all right as churches; but as hotels they are
rank failures. I ought to have bunked in with my friend, King Edward."
He climbed up the stairs and the ladders again and looked out the
little window in the belfry. Then he examined his map of Europe.
"I believe I'll take a run over to Paris," he thought. "I must be
home again by Saturday, to meet the Demon, so I'll have to make every
day count."
Without waiting for breakfast, since he had eaten a tablet the evening
before, he crept through the window and mounted into the fresh morning
The Master Key |
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 Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: hear the second bell, which summons me to one of those abundant
breakfasts the fashion of which has long passed away, in the dining-
rooms of Paris, be it understood.
Here's the history of my Arcadia. In 1815, there died at Les Aigues
one of the famous wantons of the last century,--a singer, forgotten of
the guillotine and the nobility, after preying upon exchequers, upon
literature, upon aristocracy, and all but reaching the scaffold;
forgotten, like so many fascinating old women who expiate their golden
youth in country solitudes, and replace their lost loves by another,--
man by Nature. Such women live with the flowers, with the woodland
scents, with the sky, with the sunshine, with all that sings and skips
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