| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: air. Two priests sat in the chancel, reading and waiting
penitents; and out in the nave, one very old woman was engaged in
her devotions. It was a wonder how she was able to pass her beads
when healthy young people were breathing in their palms and
slapping their chest; but though this concerned me, I was yet more
dispirited by the nature of her exercises. She went from chair to
chair, from altar to altar, circumnavigating the church. To each
shrine she dedicated an equal number of beads and an equal length
of time. Like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view of
the commercial prospect, she desired to place her supplications in
a great variety of heavenly securities. She would risk nothing on
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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 Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: come.
One day my charwoman, a working man's wife, came to beg me to honor
her sister's wedding with my presence. If you are to realize what this
wedding was like you must know that I paid my charwoman, poor
creature, four francs a month; for which sum she came every morning to
make my bed, clean my shoes, brush my clothes, sweep the room, and
make ready my breakfast, before going to her day's work of turning the
handle of a machine, at which hard drudgery she earned five-pence. Her
husband, a cabinetmaker, made four francs a day at his trade; but as
they had three children, it was all that they could do to gain an
honest living. Yet I have never met with more sterling honesty than in
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