| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: "get a light on the gangway." Then he followed Mrs. Travers
slowly.
VI
D'Alcacer, after receiving his warning, stepped back and leaned
against the edge of the table. He could not ignore in himself a
certain emotion. And indeed, when he had asked Mrs. Travers for a
sign he expected to be moved--but he had not expected the sign to
come so soon. He expected this night to pass like other nights,
in broken slumbers, bodily discomfort, and the unrest of
disconnected thinking. At the same time he was surprised at his
own emotion. He had flattered himself on the possession of more
The Rescue |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: She drove more quickly, made her way to the Bridge, and crossed it.
The car behind followed with immutable persistence. It made no
effort to close the short gap between them; but, neither, on the
other hand, did it permit that gap to widen.
They passed through Brooklyn; and then, reaching the outskirts,
Rhoda Gray, with headlights streaming into the black, with an open
Long Island road before her, flung her throttle wide, and the car
leaped like a thing of life into the night. It was a sudden start,
it gained her a hundred yards but that was all.
The wind tore at her and whipped her face; the car rocked and reeled
as in some mad frenzy. There was not much traffic, but such as
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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 Touchstone by Edith Wharton: and a roof over the head of the woman he loved, Glennard, who had
sweated, toiled, denied himself for the scant measure of
opportunity that his zeal would have converted into a kingdom--sat
wretchedly calculating that, even when he had resigned from the
club, and knocked off his cigars, and given up his Sundays out of
town, he would still be no nearer attainment.
The Spectator had slipped to his feet and as he picked it up his
eye fell again on the paragraph addressed to the friends of Mrs.
Aubyn. He had read it for the first time with a scarcely
perceptible quickening of attention: her name had so long been
public property that his eye passed it unseeingly, as the crowd in
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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 Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: of this adventure, which I should not allow myself to tell if it were
not echoing at the present moment through all the salons of Paris.
The Marquise de Listomere danced, about a month ago, with a young man
as modest as he is lively, full of good qualities, but exhibiting,
chiefly, his defects. He is ardent, but he laughs at ardor; he has
talent, and he hides it; he plays the learned man with aristocrats,
and the aristocrat with learned men. Eugene de Rastignac is one of
those extremely clever young men who try all things, and seem to sound
others to discover what the future has in store. While awaiting the
age of ambition, he scoffs at everything; he has grace and
originality, two rare qualities because the one is apt to exclude the
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