| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: their factory is now called Hrymin Juniors and Co. They have
opened a tavern near the station, and now the expensive
concertina is played not at the factory but at the tavern, and
the head of the post office often goes there, and he, too, is
engaged in some sort of traffic, and the stationmaster, too.
Hrymin Juniors have presented the deaf man Stepan with a gold
watch, and he is constantly taking it out of his pocket and
putting it to his ear.
People say of Aksinya that she has become a person of power; and
it is true that when she drives in the morning to her brickyard,
handsome and happy, with the naive smile on her face, and
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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 Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: his mind that the silk merchants were oppressing him; he put honesty
out at the door and rubbed oil on his fingers. He still brought back
weight for weight, but he sold the silk represented by the oil; and
the French silk trade has suffered from a plague of 'greased silks,'
which might have ruined Lyons and a whole branch of French commerce.
The masters and the government, instead of removing the causes of the
evil, simply drove it in with a violent external application. They
ought to have sent a clever man to Lyons, one of those men that are
said to have no principle, an Abbe Terray; but they looked at the
affair from a military point of view. The result of the troubles is a
gros de Naples at forty sous per yard; the silk is sold at this day, I
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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 Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: if not to pain Nikita by refusing his offer of the straw he put
before him, he hurriedly snatched a wisp out of the sledge, but
immediately decided that it was now no time to think of straw
and threw it down, and the wind instantly scattered it, carried
it away, and covered it with snow.
'Now we will set up a signal,' said Nikita, and turning the
front of the sledge to the wind he tied the shafts together
with a strap and set them up on end in front of the sledge.
'There now, when the snow covers us up, good folk will see the
shafts and dig us out,' he said, slapping his mittens together
and putting them on. 'That's what the old folk taught us!'
Master and Man |
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 Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: rough bare twigs of a thorn bush stretched their brown fingers. On
the upper side of the few scattered leaves there was snow, and blood.
Amster's wide serious eyes soon found something else. Beside the
bush there lay a tiny package. He lifted it up. It was a small,
light, square package, wrapped in ordinary brown paper. Where the
paper came together it was fastened by two little lumps of black
bread, which were still moist. He turned the package over and
shook his head again. On the other side was written, in pencil,
the lettering uncertain, as if scribbled in great haste and in
agitation, the sentence, "Please take this to the nearest police
station."
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