| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: The Member for Arcis
Gaudron, Abbe
Honorine
A Start in Life
Gobseck, Jean-Esther Van
Gobseck
Father Goriot
Cesar Birotteau
The Unconscious Humoriists
Godard, Joseph
The Middle Classes
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: to report what he had discovered. Then he went to his own rooms
and slept until nearly noon. On his return to the police station
he found that notices of the occurrence had already been sent out
to the papers.
CHAPTER III
THE EVENING PAPER
The autopsy proved beyond a doubt that the murdered man had been
dead for many hours before the discovery of his body. The bullet
which had struck him in the back had pierced the trachea and
death had occurred within a few minutes. The only marks for
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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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: when I looked at them alternately and at my noble mother with her
weeping daughters--these so powerless, those so basely vindictive,
and locally so omnipotent. Willingly I would have sacrificed all
my wealth for a simple permission to quit this infernal city with
my poor female relations safe and undishonored. But far other were
the intentions of that incensed magistracy. My mother was
arrested, charged with some offense equal to petty treason, or
scandalum magnatum, or the sowing of sedition; and, though what she
said was true, where, alas! was she to look for evidence? Here was
seen the want of gentlemen. Gentlemen, had they been even equally
tyrannical, would have recoiled with shame from taking vengeance on
|
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 Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: timidity of his disposition and the supple arts by which he had
risen in the world, than to the degree of eminence which he had
attained; as they tended to show an original mediocrity of
understanding, however highly it had been cultivated, and a
native meanness of disposition, however carefully veiled. He
loved the ostentatious display of his wealth, less as a man to
whom habit has made it necessary, than as one to whom it is still
delightful from its novelty. The most trivial details did not
escape him; and Lucy soon learned to watch the flush of scorn
which crossed Ravenswood's cheek, when he heard her father
gravely arguing with Lockhard, nay, even with the old
The Bride of Lammermoor |
