| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: but I warn't troublin' myself none 'bout dem.
"'Bout dat time Sally Jackson, dat used to be my second
chambermaid en 'uz head chambermaid now, she come out on de guard,
en 'uz pow'ful glad to see me, en so 'uz all de officers;
en I tole 'em I'd got kidnapped en sole down de river,
en dey made me up twenty dollahs en give it to me, en Sally she rigged
me out wid good clo'es, en when I got here I went straight to
whah you used to wuz, en den I come to dis house, en dey say
you's away but 'spected back every day; so I didn't dast to go
down de river to Dawson's, 'ca'se I might miss you.
"Well, las' Monday I 'uz pass'n by one o' dem places in
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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 Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: "It is wonderful! Wonderful! Muller, this case will go on record
as one of your finest achievements - and we thought it was so simple
"Oh, indeed, sir, chance favoured me at every turn," replied Muller
modestly.
"There is no such thing as chance," said the commissioner. "We
might as well be honest with ourselves. Any one might have seen,
doubtless did see, all the things you saw, but no one else had the
insight to recognise their value, nor the skill to follow them up
to such a conclusion. But it's a sad case, a sad case. I never
wrote a warrant with a heavier heart. Thorne is a true-hearted
gentleman, while the scoundrel he killed..."
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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 Disputation of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther: even though the commissary, nay, even though the pope himself,
were to stake his soul upon it.
53. They are enemies of Christ and of the pope, who bid the
Word of God be altogether silent in some Churches, in order
that pardons may be preached in others.
54. Injury is done the Word of God when, in the same sermon,
an equal or a longer time is spent on pardons than on this
Word.
55. It must be the intention of the pope that if pardons,
which are a very small thing, are celebrated with one bell,
with single processions and ceremonies, then the Gospel, which
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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 A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: administrators, soldiers, and artists in Bohemia; every faculty, every
kind of brain is represented there. Bohemia is a microcosm. If the
Czar would buy Bohemia for a score of millions and set its population
down in Odessa--always supposing that they consented to leave the
asphalt of the boulevards--Odessa would be Paris with the year. In
Bohemia, you find the flower doomed to wither and come to nothing; the
flower of the wonderful young manhood of France, so sought after by
Napoleon and Louis XIV., so neglected for the last thirty years by the
modern Gerontocracy that is blighting everything else--that splendid
young manhood of whom a witness so little prejudiced as Professor
Tissot wrote, 'On all sides the Emperor employed a younger generation
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