| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: with us on the morrow, if you please! And, jesting apart, every
one was anxious to know the hour of our departure. Now, when you
are going to crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, a crowd,
however friendly, is undesirable; and so we told them not before
twelve, and mentally determined to be off by ten at latest.
Towards evening, we went abroad again to post some letters. It was
cool and pleasant; the long village was quite empty, except for one
or two urchins who followed us as they might have followed a
menagerie; the hills and the tree-tops looked in from all sides
through the clear air; and the bells were chiming for yet another
service.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Through all this variety of decoration, however, the room showed
its original characteristics; its low stud, its cross-beam, its
chimney-piece, with the old-fashioned Dutch tiles; so that it was
the emblem of a mind industriously stored with foreign ideas,
and elaborated into artificial refinement, but neither larger,
nor, in its proper self, more elegant than before.
There were two objects that appeared rather out of place in this
very handsomely furnished room. One was a large map, or
surveyor's plan, of a tract of land, which looked as if it had
been drawn a good many years ago, and was now dingy with smoke,
and soiled, here and there, with the touch of fingers. The other
House of Seven Gables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: with such a savage, silent frenzy of hurry, that I knew that he
was in mortal fear of some miscarriage. Even now we were on the
rock he said nothing, nor so much as relaxed the frowning look
upon his face; but clapped flat down, and keeping only one eye
above the edge of our place of shelter scouted all round the
compass. The dawn had come quite, clear; we could see the stony
sides of the valley, and its bottom, which was bestrewed with
rocks, and the river, which went from one side to another, and
made white falls; but nowhere the smoke of a house, nor any
living creature but some eagles screaming round a cliff.
Then at last Alan smiled.
Kidnapped |
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 Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: is a stockholder in all the fashion papers; and he sells, under the
name of a certain chemist, an infamous drug which, for his share
alone, gives him an income of thirty thousand francs, and costs in
advertisements a hundred thousand yearly."
"Is it possible!" cried Gazonal.
"Remember this," said Bixiou, gravely. "In Paris there is no such
thing as a small business; all things swell to large proportions, down
to the sale of rags and matches. The lemonade-seller who, with his
napkin under his arm, meets you as you enter his shop, may be worth
his fifty thousand francs a year; the waiter in a restaurant is
eligible for the Chamber; the man you take for a beggar in the street
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