| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: unsuccessful attempts at forgery in the stove.
He put the bill that he meant to take with him in an envelope, and
helped himself to five hundred thousand francs in French and English
bank-notes from the safe, which he locked. Then he put everything in
order, lit a candle, blew out the lamp, took up his hat and umbrella,
and went out sedately, as usual, to leave one of the two keys of the
strong room with Madame de Nucingen, in the absence of her husband the
Baron.
"You are in luck, M. Castanier," said the banker's wife as he entered
the room; "we have a holiday on Monday; you can go into the country,
or to Soizy."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: I would face her, all protest.
"Didn't I tell you, Sis, that I couldn't eat a
mouthful? Not a mouthf--um-m-m-m! How perfectly
scrumptious that looks! What's that affair in the
lettuce leaf? Oh, can't I begin on that divine-looking
pinky stuff in the tall glass? H'm? Oh, please!"
"I thought--" Norah would begin; and then she would
snigger softly.
"Oh, well, that was hours ago," I would explain,
loftily. "Perhaps I could manage a bite or two now."
Whereupon I would demolish everything except the
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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 The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: italic names; a practice only followed in my two affected little
books of travel, where a typographical MINAUDERIE of the sort
appeared to me in character; and what you say of it, then, is quite
just. But why should you forget yourself and use these same
italics as an index to my theology some pages further on? This is
lightness of touch indeed; may I say, it is almost sharpness of
practice?
Excuse these remarks. I have been on the whole much interested,
and sometimes amused. Are you aware that the praiser of this
'brave gymnasium' has not seen a canoe nor taken a long walk since
'79? that he is rarely out of the house nowadays, and carries 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 Agesilaus by Xenophon: defy any one to name a single one to which Agesilaus was enslaved:
Agesilaus, who regarded drunkenness as a thing to hold aloof from like
madness, and immoderate eating like the snare of indolence. Even the
double portion[1] allotted to him at the banquet was not spent on his
own appetite; rather would be make distribution of the whole,
retaining neither portion for himself. In his view of the matter this
doubling of the king's share was not for the sake of surfeiting, but
that the king might have the wherewithal to honour whom he wished. And
so, too, sleep[2] he treated not as a master, but as a slave,
subservient to higher concerns. The very couch he lay upon must be
sorrier than that of any of his company or he would have blushed for
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