| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: of this strange bustle.
A whole tribe of workmen were hurriedly completing the furnishing and
redecoration of the palace. The first floor, worthy of the antique
glories of Venice, displayed to Emilio's waking eyes the magnificence
of which he had just been dreaming, and the fairy had exercised
admirable taste. Splendor worthy of a parvenu sovereign was to be seen
even in the smallest details. Emilio wandered about without remark
from anybody, and surprise followed on surprise.
Curious, then, to know what was going forward on the second floor, he
went up, and found everything finished. The unknown laborers,
commissioned by a wizard to revive the marvels of the Arabian nights
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: products that can in the nature of things be manufactured
elsewhere than where they are consumed will be imported in
payment of deer-forest rents from foreign sportsmen, or of
dividends due to shareholders resident in England, but holding
shares in companies abroad, and these imports will not be paid
for by ex ports, because rent and interest are not paid for at
all--a fact which the Free Traders do not yet see, or at any rate
do not mention, although it is the key to the whole mystery of
their opponents. The cry for Protection will become wild, but no
one will dare resort to a demonstrably absurd measure that must
raise prices before it raises wages, and that has everywhere
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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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: growing up effeminate, empty of all knowledge but what tends
directly to the making of a fortune; or rather, to speak correctly,
to the keeping up the fortunes which their fathers have made for
them; while of the minority, who are indeed thinkers and readers,
how many women as well as men have we seen wearying their souls
with study undirected, often misdirected; craving to learn, yet not
knowing how or what to learn; cultivating, with unwholesome energy,
the head at the expense of the body and the heart; catching up with
the most capricious self-will one mania after another, and tossing
it away again for some new phantom; gorging the memory with facts
which no one has taught them to arrange, and the reason with
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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 Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: what she would suffer in parting with her children, after keeping
them so long from being thrown on the parish,
she reluctantly consented.
"My project of usefulness ended not here; I determined to
speak to the attorney; he frequently paid me compliments. His
character did not intimidate me; but, imagining that Peggy must be
mistaken, and that no man could turn a deaf ear to such a tale of
complicated distress, I determined to walk to the town with Mary
the next morning, and request him to wait for the rent, and keep
my secret, till my uncle's return.
"My repose was sweet; and, waking with the first dawn of day,
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