| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: the edge of the vessel, keeping his balance by planting his feet
against one of those traverse beams, like the backbone of a fish, that
hold the planks of a boat together. A young mother, who bore her baby
in her arms, and seemed to belong to the working class in Ostend,
moved aside to make room for the stranger. There was neither servility
nor scorn in her manner of doing this; it was a simple sign of the
goodwill by which the poor, who know by long experience the value of a
service and the warmth that fellowship brings, give expression to the
open-heartedness and the natural impulses of their souls; so artlessly
do they reveal their good qualities and their defects. The stranger
thanked her by a gesture full of gracious dignity, and took his place
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: and Tom got shot in the leg. No, he wasn't. It only
just p'isoned him for more. That was all the effect it
had. You see, when we three came back up the river
in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and
the village received us with a torchlight procession and
speeches, and everybody hurrah'd and shouted, it
made us heroes, and that was what Tom Sawyer had
always been hankering to be.
For a while he WAS satisfied. Everybody made
much of him, and he tilted up his nose and stepped
around the town as though he owned it. Some called
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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 Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: The horrible aspects of these marshes, these sloughs, the mud of which
was systematically raked, the dull gray earth that the Breton flora
held in horror, were in keeping with the gloom that filled our souls.
When we reached a spot where we crossed an arm of the sea, which no
doubt serves to feed the stagnant salt-pools, we noticed with relief
the puny vegetation which sprouted through the sand of the beach. As
we crossed, we saw the island on which the Cambremers had lived; but
we turned away our heads.
Arriving at the hotel, we noticed a billiard-table, and finding that
it was the only billiard-table in Croisic, we made our preparations to
leave during the night. The next day we went to Guerande. Pauline was
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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 Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: great, here, that we have to be made so we can FEEL them - our old
ways of counting and measuring and ciphering wouldn't ever give us
an idea of them, but would only confuse us and oppress us and make
our heads ache."
After some more talk about this, I says: "Sandy, I notice that I
hardly ever see a white angel; where I run across one white angel,
I strike as many as a hundred million copper-colored ones - people
that can't speak English. How is that?"
"Well, you will find it the same in any State or Territory of the
American corner of heaven you choose to go to. I have shot along,
a whole week on a stretch, and gone millions and millions of miles,
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