| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: "Look out!" cried D'Artagnan, "I see black points and red
points moving yonder. Why did you talk of a regiment,
Athos? It is a veritable army!"
"My faith, yes," said Athos; "there they are. See the
sneaks come, without drum or trumpet. Ah, ah! have you
finished, Grimaud?"
Grimaud made a sign in the affirmative, and pointed to a
dozen bodies which he had set up in the most picturesque
attitudes. Some carried arms, others seemed to be taking
aim, and the remainder appeared merely to be sword in hand.
"Bravo!" said Athos; "that does honor to your imagination."
The Three Musketeers |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: sleeping and waking, I shall have sunny days in Paris, and nights
of toil in India,--a painful dream, a joyful reality; and I shall
live so utterly in that reality that my actual life will pass as a
dream. I shall have memories! I shall recall, line by line,
strophe by strophe, our glorious five years' poem. I shall
remember the days of your pleasure in some new dress or some
adornment which made you to my eyes a fresh delight. Yes, dear
angel, I go like a man vowed to some great emprize, the guerdon of
which, if success attend him, is the recovery of his beautiful
mistress. Oh! my precious love, my Natalie, keep me as a religion
in your heart. Be the child that I have just seen asleep! If you
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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 Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: transparent crimson, into sleeps that lasted all day.
He was not conscious how he knew he was in a hospital: but he did
know it, vaguely; thought sometimes of the long halls outside of
the door, with ranges of rooms opening into them, like this, and
of very barns of rooms on the other side of the building with
rows of white cots where the poorer patients lay: a stretch of
travel from which his brain came back to his snug fireplace,
quite tired, and to Lois sitting knitting by it. He called the
little Welsh-woman, "Sister," too, who used to come in a stuff
dress, and white bands about her face, to give his medicine, and
gossip with Lois in the evening: she had a comical voice, like a
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: said: "If you stand here you can just manage to see it. I had it
over the mantel-piece, but he wouldn't let it stay."
Yes--I could just manage to see it--the first portrait of Jack's
I had ever had to strain my eyes over! Usually they had the
place of honour--say the central panel in a pale yellow or rose
Dubarry drawing-room, or a monumental easel placed so that it
took the light through curtains of old Venetian point. The more
modest place became the picture better; yet, as my eyes grew
accustomed to the half-light, all the characteristic qualities
came out--all the hesitations disguised as audacities, the tricks
of prestidigitation by which, with such consummate skill, he
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