| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: foam ran to her feet, and the dead leaves swarmed about her back,
and the rags blew about her face in the blowing of the wind.
"Now," said the King's daughter, and she named a holy name, "this
is the most unhappy old crone between two seas."
"Daughter of a King," said the crone, "you dwell in a stone house,
and your hair is like the gold: but what is your profit? Life is
not long, nor lives strong; and you live after the way of simple
men, and have no thought for the morrow and no power upon the
hour."
"Thought for the morrow, that I have," said the King's daughter;
"but power upon the hour, that have I not." And she mused with
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: under the degree of a captain in commission should have their
lives, be exempted from plunder, and have passes to go to their
respective dwellings. All the captains and superior officers, with
all the lords and gentlemen, as well in commission as volunteers,
to surrender prisoners at discretion, only that they should not be
plundered by the soldiers.
21st. The generals rejected those offers; and when the people came
about them again for bread, set open one of the gates, and bid them
go out to the enemy, which a great many did willingly; upon which
the Lord Goring ordered all the rest that came about his door to be
turned out after them. But when the people came to the Lord
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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 Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: It was a perfectly recognisable human body. Had some particular soil,
like that of the cemetery St. Michel, at Bordeaux, preserved it thus
for so many ages? It might be so. But this dried corpse, with its
parchment-like skin drawn tightly over the bony frame, the limbs
still preserving their shape, sound teeth, abundant hair, and finger
and toe nails of frightful length, this desiccated mummy startled us
by appearing just as it had lived countless ages ago. I stood mute
before this apparition of remote antiquity. My uncle, usually so
garrulous, was struck dumb likewise. We raised the body. We stood it
up against a rock. It seemed to stare at us out of its empty orbits.
We sounded with our knuckles his hollow frame.
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
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 Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: an interest in the conversation she displays a grace which is
otherwise buried beneath the precautions of cold demeanor, and then
she is charming. She does not seek success, but she obtains it. We
find that for which we do not seek: that saying is so often true that
some day it will be turned into a proverb. It is, in fact, the moral
of this adventure, which I should not allow myself to tell if it were
not echoing at the present moment through all the salons of Paris.
The Marquise de Listomere danced, about a month ago, with a young man
as modest as he is lively, full of good qualities, but exhibiting,
chiefly, his defects. He is ardent, but he laughs at ardor; he has
talent, and he hides it; he plays the learned man with aristocrats,
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