| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: ocean on one side, and on the other the arm of the sea which runs up
between Croisic and the rocky shore of Guerande, at the base of which
lay the salt marshes, denuded of vegetation, I looked at Pauline and
asked her if she felt the courage to face the burning sun and the
strength to walk through sand.
"I have boots," she said. "Let us go," and she pointed to the tower of
Batz, which arrested the eye by its immense pile placed there like a
pyramid; but a slender, delicately outlined pyramid, a pyramid so
poetically ornate that the imagination figured in it the earliest ruin
of a great Asiatic city.
We advanced a few steps and sat down upon the portion of a large rock
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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 Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: bait, being a little hardened on a warm tile and cut into fit pieces. Nay,
mulberries, and those black-berries which grow upon briars, be good
baits for Chubs or Carps: with these many have been taken in ponds,
and in some rivers where such trees have grown near the water, and the
fruit customarily drops into it. And there be a hundred other baits, more
than can be well named, which, by constant baiting the water, will
become a tempting bait for any fish in it.
You are also to know, that there be divers kinds of CADIS, or Case-
worms, that are to be found in this nation, in several distinct counties,
in several little brooks that relate to bigger rivers; as namely, one cadis
called a piper, whose husk, or case, is a piece of reed about an inch
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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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: gardens, not a hogstye, not a necessary house, but what was built
of old planks, beams, wales, and timbers, etc., the wrecks of
ships, and ruins of mariners' and merchants' fortunes; and in some
places were whole yards filled and piled up very high with the same
stuff laid up, as I supposed to sell for the like building
purposes, as there should he occasion.
About the year 1692 (I think it was that year) there was a
melancholy example of what I have said of this place: a fleet of
200 sail of light colliers (so they call the ships bound northward
empty to fetch coals from Newcastle to London) went out of Yarmouth
Roads with a fair wind, to pursue their voyage, and were taken
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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 Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: thus became one of the largest landowners in the kingdom. He was able
to marry my mother, a Grandlieu of the younger branch. Though ill-
gotten, this property has been singularly profitable.
"For my part, being determined to remedy the mischief, I wrote to
Switzerland, and knew no peace till I was on the traces of the
Protestant victim's heirs. At last I discovered that the Jeanrenauds,
reduced to abject want, had left Fribourg and returned to live in
France. Finally, I found a M. Jeanrenaud, lieutenant in a cavalry
regiment under Napoleon, the sole heir of this unhappy family. In my
eyes, monsieur, the rights of the Jeanrenauds were clear. To establish
a prescriptive right is it not necessary that there should have been
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