| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: unable to make out what she was up to. As if, with her absurd bad
reasons, she could have begun to tell him! Sometimes she thought
it would be amusing to let him have them full in the face, for she
felt she should die of him unless she once in a while stupefied
him; and sometimes she thought it would be disgusting and perhaps
even fatal. She liked him, however, to think her silly, for that
gave her the margin which at the best she would always require; and
the only difficulty about this was that he hadn't enough
imagination to oblige her. It produced none the less something of
the desired effect--to leave him simply wondering why, over the
matter of their reunion, she didn't yield to his arguments. Then
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Of ocean's azure heavens where the mirrored planets are!
I knew that thou would'st come, for when at first
The dry wood burgeoned, and the sap of spring
Swelled in my green and tender bark or burst
To myriad multitudinous blossoming
Which mocked the midnight with its mimic moons
That did not dread the dawn, and first the thrushes' rapturous
tunes
Startled the squirrel from its granary,
And cuckoo flowers fringed the narrow lane,
Through my young leaves a sensuous ecstasy
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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 Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: leading to this terrace and the walls which supported it showed their
great age by the ravages of time. The flat moss which clings to stones
had laid its dragon-green carpet on each surface. The numerous
families of the pellitories, the chamomiles, the mesembryanthemums,
pushed their varied and abundant tufts through the loop-holes in the
walls, cracked and fissured in spite of their thickness. Botany had
lavished there its most elegant drapery of ferns of all kinds, snap-
dragons with their violet mouths and golden pistils, the blue anchusa,
the brown lichens, so that the old worn stones seemed mere accessories
peeping out at intervals from this fresh growth. Along the terrace a
box hedge, cut into geometric figures, enclosed a pleasure garden
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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 Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: "Your half-breeds will think I am one of themselves," said Gaston,
showing his dusty clothes. "I am not fit to be seated with you." But he
did not mean this any more than his host had meant his remark about the
food. In his pack, which an Indian had brought from his horse, he carried
some garments of civilization. And presently, after fresh water and not a
little painstaking with brush and scarf, there came back to the Padre a
young guest whose elegance and bearing and ease of the great world were
to the exiled priest as sweet as was his traveled conversation.
They repaired to the hall and took their seats at the head of the long
table. For the Spanish centuries of stately custom lived at Santa YsabeI
del Mar, inviolate, feudal, remote.
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