| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Tended his shop with learned air,
Watered his drugs and oiled his hair,
And gave advice to the unwary,
Like any sleek apothecary.
Meanwhile upon the deep afar
Robin the brave was waging war,
With other tarry desperadoes
About the latitude of Barbadoes.
He knew no touch of craven fear;
His voice was thunder in the cheer;
First, from the main-to'-gallan' high,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: this history.
Miss Bartram's inmost life, as a woman, was no longer the same.
The point of view from which she had beheld the world was shifted,
and she was obliged to remodel all her feelings and ideas to
conform to it. But the process was gradual, and no one stood near
enough to her to remark it. She was occasionally suspected of that
"eccentricity" which, in a woman of five-and-twenty, is looked upon
as the first symptom of a tendency to old-maidenhood, but which is
really the sign of an earnest heart struggling with the questions
of life. In the society of cities, most men give only the shallow,
flashy surface of their natures to the young women they meet, and
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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 Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: the battlefield was there; all was ready, the priest, the altar, the
torches! Jeanne belonged henceforth to misery. Scarcely had she time
to say to her young cousin who was set at liberty:--
"Georges, if you love me, never see me again!"
She heard the departing steps of her lover, whom, in truth, she never
saw again; but in the depths of her heart she still kept sacred his
last look which returned perpetually in her dreams and illumined them.
Living like a cat shut into a lion's cage, the young wife dreaded at
all hours the claws of the master which ever threatened her. She knew
that in order to be happy she must forget the past and think only of
the future; but there were days, consecrated to the memory of some
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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 Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: ran to the door, and disappeared. This event produced a great
sensation. The card-players paused. Every one questioned his neighbor.
The murmur of voices swelled, and groups gathered.
"Can Monsieur Taillefer be--" I began.
"--dead?" said my sarcastic neighbor. "You would wear the gayest
mourning, I fancy!"
"But what has happened to him?"
"The poor dear man," said the mistress of the house, "is subject to
attacks of a disease the name of which I never can remember, though
Monsieur Brousson has often told it to me; and he has just been seized
with one."
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