| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: quite unused to polite society. He looked uneasy in his clothes, he
was at a loss to know what to do with his hands, he shifted about from
one foot to another as he spoke, and half rose and sat down again when
anybody spoke to him. He seemed ready to do some menial service; he
was obsequious, nervous, and grave by turns, laughing eagerly at every
joke, listening with servility; and occasionally, imagining that
people were laughing at him, he assumed a knowing air. His treatise
weighed upon his mind; again and again he tried to talk about
silkworms; but the luckless wight happened first upon M. de Bartas,
who talked music in reply, and next on M. de Saintot, who quoted
Cicero to him; and not until the evening was half over did the mayor
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: with the children of Israel, over-thwart the sea all dry, when
Pharaoh the King of Egypt chased them. And that sea is well a six
mile of largeness in length; and in that sea was Pharaoh drowned
and all his host that he led. That sea is not more red than
another sea; but in some place thereof is the gravel red, and
therefore men clepen it the Red Sea. That sea runneth to the ends
of Arabia and of Palestine.
That sea lasteth more than a four journeys, and then go men by
desert unto the Vale of Elim, and from thence to the Mount of
Sinai. And ye may well understand, that by this desert no man may
go on horseback, because that there ne is neither meat for horse ne
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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 A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: a god, if you call him God only with your lips, or worship him
with the knees or bodily gestures; but if you trust Him with the
heart, and look to Him for all good, grace and favor, whether in
works or sufferings, in life or death, in joy or sorrow; as the
Lord Christ says to the heathen woman, John iv: "I say unto thee,
they that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth."
And this faith, faithfulness, confidence deep in the heart, is
the true fulfilling of the First Commandment; without this there
is no other work that is able to satisfy this Commandment. And
as this Commandment is the very first, highest and best, from
which all the others proceed, in which they exist, and by which
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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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: reading there the qualities of the soul, and at last effaces all its
defects.
"At the pace at which that man goes, our girls will soon have to go on
their knees to a suitor!" said Monsieur Guillaume to himself, as he
read the first decree by which Napoleon drew in advance on the
conscript classes.
From that day the old merchant, grieved at seeing his eldest daughter
fade, remembered how he had married Mademoiselle Chevrel under much
the same circumstances as those of Joseph Lebas and Virginie. A good
bit of business, to marry off his daughter, and discharge a sacred
debt by repaying to an orphan the benefit he had formerly received
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