| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: it is to see how she makes that passion the very centre of her world.
"Tullia was irresistible; she twisted du Bruel round her fingers, the
sky grew blue again, the evening was glorious. And ingenious writer of
plays as he is, he never so much as saw that his wife had buried a
trouble out of sight.
" 'Such is life, my dear fellow,' he said to me, 'ups and downs and
contrasts.'
" 'Especially life off the stage,' I put in.
" 'That is just what I mean,' he continued. 'Why, but for these
violent emotions, one would be bored to death! Ah! that woman has the
gift of rousing me.'
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: customers were shocked. They were mainly chorus girls and ladies
of doubtful complexion in search of cheap and ultra footgear,
and--to use a health term--hardened by exposure.
Have I told you how pretty she was? She was so pretty that
you immediately forgave her the indecency of her pitiful little
gown. She was pretty in a daringly demure fashion, like a wicked
little Puritan, or a poverty-stricken Cleo de Merode, with her
smooth brown hair parted in the middle, drawn severely down over
her ears, framing the lovely oval of her face and ending in a
simple coil at the neck. Some serpent's wisdom had told Sophy to
eschew puffs. But I think her prettiness could have triumphed even
Buttered Side Down |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: to pass over nothing through laziness or hastiness, lest the vision
once offered and despised should be withdrawn; and looking at every
object as if he were never to behold it again.
Moreover, he must keep himself free from all those perturbations of
mind which not only weaken energy, but darken and confuse the
inductive faculty; from haste and laziness, from melancholy,
testiness, pride, and all the passions which make men see only what
they wish to see. Of solemn and scrupulous reverence for truth; of
the habit of mind which regards each fact and discovery, not as our
own possession, but as the possession of its Creator, independent
of us, our tastes, our needs, or our vain-glory, I hardly need to
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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 Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: being brought into the senate, they spoke to this purpose: that the
Romans, preferring justice before victory, had taught them rather to
embrace submission than liberty; they did not so much confess themselves
to be inferior in strength, as they must acknowledge them to be superior
in virtue. The senate remitted the whole matter to Camillus, to judge
and order as he thought fit; who, taking a sum of money of the
Falerians, and, making a peace with the whole nation of the Faliscans,
returned home.
But the soldiers, who had expected to have the pillage of the city, when
they came to Rome empty-handed, railed against Camillus among their
fellow-citizens, as a hater of the people, and one that grudged all
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