| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: "Gaubertin has control of nearly one third of the supplies sent to
Paris. As general agent of the timber business, he orders all the work
of the forests,--the felling, chopping, floating, and sending to
market. Being in close relations with the workmen, he is the arbiter
of prices. It has taken him three years to create this position, but
he holds it now like a fortress. He is essential to all dealers, never
favoring one more than another; he regulates the whole business in
their interests, and their affairs are better and more cheaply looked
after by him than they were in the old time by separate agents for
each firm. For instance, he has so completely put a stop to
competition that he has absolute control of the auction sales; the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: face as he smoked; and when his pipe went out, he did not know
it, but sat motionless. Mrs. Howth, fairly confounded by the
shock, went up-stairs, and stayed there a long time. When she
came down, the old lady's blue eyes were tenderer, if that were
possible, and her face very pale. She went into the library and
asked her husband if she didn't prophesy this two years ago, and
he said she did, and after a while asked her if she remembered
the barbecue-night at Judge Clapp's thirty years ago. She
blushed at that, and then went up and kissed him. She had heard
Joel's horse clattering up to the kitchen-door, so concluded she
would go out and scold him. Under the circumstances it would be
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: beneath it, and laid aside in a place where it will be safe from
anything that may change its appearance. The uncovered area is
then digged perpendicularly to the depth of about three feet, and
is then gradually widened so as to form a conical chamber six or
seven feet deep. The whole of the earth displaced by this
process, being of a different color from that an the surface, is
handed up in a vessel, and heaped into a skin or cloth, in which
it is conveyed to the stream and thrown into the midst of the
current, that it may be entirely carried off. Should the cache
not be formed in the vicinity of a stream, the earth thus thrown
up is carried to a distance, and scattered in such manner as not
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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 Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: then at Katharine, who smiled but said nothing either, upon which Mrs.
Hilbery seemed possessed by a brilliant idea, and exclaimed:
"I'm sure Mr. Denham would like to see our things, Katharine. I'm sure
he's not like that dreadful young man, Mr. Ponting, who told me that
he considered it our duty to live exclusively in the present. After
all, what IS the present? Half of it's the past, and the better half,
too, I should say," she added, turning to Mr. Fortescue.
Denham rose, half meaning to go, and thinking that he had seen all
that there was to see, but Katharine rose at the same moment, and
saying, "Perhaps you would like to see the pictures," led the way
across the drawing-room to a smaller room opening out of it.
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