| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: appetite that did abundant honour to our hospitality.
"When the table was cleared, our conversation became more
serious. He hung down his head while he spoke of his father's
conduct towards us. He made, on his own part, the most submissive
excuses. `I say the less upon the subject,' said he, `because I
do not wish to recall a circumstance that fills me with grief and
shame.' If he were sincere in the beginning, he became much more
so in the end, for the conversation had not lasted half an hour,
when I perceived that Manon's charms had made a visible
impression upon him. His looks and his manner became by degrees
more tender. He, however, allowed no expression to escape him;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: the boat stood riches, pride, learning, debauchery, and crime--human
society, such as art and thought and education and worldly interests
and laws have made it; and at this end there was terror and wailing,
innumerable different impulses all repressed by hideous doubts--at
this end, and at this only, the agony of fear.
Above all these human lives stood a strong man, the skipper; no doubts
assailed him, the chief, the king, the fatalist among them. He was
trusting in himself rather than in Providence, crying, "Bail away!"
instead of "Holy Virgin," defying the storm, in fact, and struggling
with the sea like a wrestler.
But the helpless poor at the other end of the wherry! The mother
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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 Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: of all species,--were promulgating in the month of January, 1824, so
many different opinions about Madame Firmiani that it would be tedious
to write them down. We have merely sought to show that a man seeking
to understand her, yet unwilling or unable to go to her house, would
(from the answers to his inquiries) have had equal reason to suppose
her a widow or wife, silly or wise, virtuous or the reverse, rich or
pour, soulless or full of feeling, handsome or plain,--in short, there
were as many Madame Firmianis as there are species in society, or
sects in Catholicism. Frightful reflection! we are all like
lithographic blocks, from which an indefinite number of copies can be
drawn by criticism,--the proofs being more or less like us according
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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 Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
CHAPTER I
Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a
little anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that
time, like a comet. LIKE a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the
lot of them! Of course there warn't any of them going my way, as a
steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like
the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart
for the Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that
was going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a
brush together. But it was generally pretty one-sided, because I
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