| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: He had received the letter I had written to him a week before; it
gave him extreme delight; but, notwithstanding the flattering
hopes I had held out of my conversion, he could not implicitly
rely on my statements. He determined therefore to satisfy
himself of my reformation by the evidence of his own senses, and
to regulate his conduct towards me according to his conviction of
my sincerity. He arrived the day after my imprisonment.
"His first visit was to Tiberge, to whose care I begged that he
would address his answer. He could not learn from him either my
present abode or condition: Tiberge merely told him of my
principal adventures since I had escaped from St. Lazare.
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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 Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: 1610, a fact which proved that they were guilders of Van
Baerle the father and of Van Baerle the grandfather; but we
will inform the reader at once that these three or four
hundred thousand guilders were only the pocket money, or
sort of purse, for Cornelius van Baerle, the hero of this
story, as his landed property in the province yielded him an
income of about ten thousand guilders a year.
When the worthy citizen, the father of Cornelius, passed
from time into eternity, three months after having buried
his wife, who seemed to have departed first to smooth for
him the path of death as she had smoothed for him the path
The Black Tulip |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: terror of a bandit's life is that no man trusts his fellow. Hence
one betrays another for fear of betrayal, or stabs him in the
back to avoid it.
The outlaw chief had slipped into the room so silently that the
first inkling they had of his presence was that gentle, insulting
voice. Now, as he lounged easily before them, leg thrown over the
back of a chair and thumbs sagging from his trouser pockets, they
looked the picture of schoolboys caught by their master in a
conspiracy. How long had he been there? How much had he heard?
Full of suspicion and bad whisky as they were, his confident
contempt still cowed the very men who were planning his
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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 Apology by Plato: part, O men of Athens? Clearly that which is my due. And what is my due?
What return shall be made to the man who has never had the wit to be idle
during his whole life; but has been careless of what the many care for--
wealth, and family interests, and military offices, and speaking in the
assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting that I was
really too honest a man to be a politician and live, I did not go where I
could do no good to you or to myself; but where I could do the greatest
good privately to every one of you, thither I went, and sought to persuade
every man among you that he must look to himself, and seek virtue and
wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look to the state
before he looks to the interests of the state; and that this should be the
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