| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: skilled manipulation of all the polished implements of her craft,
had won for her an important place in the Gormer group. If their
resonant hilarity could never be hers, she contributed a note of
easy elegance more valuable to Mattie Gormer than the louder
passages of the band. Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood
indeed a little in awe of her; but Mattie's following, headed by
Paul Morpeth, made her feel that they prized her for the very
qualities they most conspicuously lacked. If Morpeth, whose
social indolence was as great as his artistic activity, had
abandoned himself to the easy current of the Gormer existence,
where the minor exactions of politeness were unknown or ignored,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: entertaining guests at Mlle. Turquet's house--Desroches the attorney,
Bixiou of the caricatures, Lousteau the journalist, Nathan, and
others; it is quite unnecessary to give any further description of
these personages, all bearers of illustrious names in the /Comedie
Humaine/. Young La Palferine, in spite of his title of Count and his
great descent, which, alas! means a great descent in fortune likewise,
had honored the notary's little establishment with his presence.
At dinner, in such a house, one does not expect to meet the
patriarchal beef, the skinny fowl and salad of domestic and family
life, nor is there any attempt at the hypocritical conversation of
drawing-rooms furnished with highly respectable matrons. When, alas!
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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 Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: childish of his age, though not backward in schooling, which
had been pushed on far by a private governor, one M'Brair, a
forfeited minister harboured in that capacity at Montroymont.
The boy, already much employed in secret by his mother, was
the most apt hand conceivable to run upon a message, to carry
food to lurking fugitives, or to stand sentry on the skyline
above a conventicle. It seemed no place on the moorlands was
so naked but what he would find cover there; and as he knew
every hag, boulder, and heather-bush in a circuit of seven
miles about Montroymont, there was scarce any spot but what
he could leave or approach it unseen. This dexterity had won
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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 The Call of the Wild by Jack London: Mercedes nursed a special grievance--the grievance of sex. She was
pretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days.
But the present treatment by her husband and brother was
everything save chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless.
They complained. Upon which impeachment of what to her was her
most essential sex-prerogative, she made their lives unendurable.
She no longer considered the dogs, and because she was sore and
tired, she persisted in riding on the sled. She was pretty and
soft, but she weighed one hundred and twenty pounds--a lusty last
straw to the load dragged by the weak and starving animals. She
rode for days, till they fell in the traces and the sled stood
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