| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: fruit. Perhaps they had both let the moment slip when souls may meet
in comprehension. One day the young wife's too sensitive heart
received one of those blows which so strain the bonds of feeling that
they seem to be broken. She withdrew into solitude. But before long a
fatal idea suggested to her to seek counsel and comfort in the bosom
of her family.
So one morning she made her way towards the grotesque facade of the
humble, silent home where she had spent her childhood. She sighed as
she looked up at the sash-window, whence one day she had sent her
first kiss to him who now shed as much sorrow as glory on her life.
Nothing was changed in the cavern, where the drapery business had,
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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 Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: was lodging. Returning presently upon his steps, he ran up the
miserable stairway with anxious rapidity until he reached an upper
chamber nestling between the joists of a roof "en colombage,"--the
plain, slight covering of the houses of old Paris. Near the single and
gloomy window of the room sat a young girl, who rose quickly as the
door opened, with a gesture of love; she had recognized the young
man's touch upon the latch.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"It is--it is," he cried, choking with joy, "that I feel myself a
painter! I have doubted it till now; but to-day I believe in myself. I
can be a great man. Ah, Gillette, we shall be rich, happy! There is
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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 Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And when the dead man goes it seems to me
'T were better for us all to do away
With weeping, and be glad that he is gone.
XIII
Still through the dusk of dead, blank-legended,
And unremunerative years we search
To get where life begins, and still we groan
Because we do not find the living spark
Where no spark ever was; and thus we die,
Still searching, like poor old astronomers
Who totter off to bed and go to sleep,
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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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: himself guilty, never having been accused. He has winced when
nobody thought of hitting him. I did but put the cap out, and
madly butting and chafing, behold my friend rushes out to put his
head into it! Never mind, Sacks, you are found out; but I bear you
no malice, my man.
And yet to be found out, I know from my own experience, must be
painful and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the inward vanity.
Suppose I am a poltroon, let us say. With fierce mustache, loud
talk, plentiful oaths, and an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless
a character for courage. I swear fearfully at cabmen and women;
brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps knock down a little man or two
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