| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: handkerchief, and with drunken obstinacy he demanded it back again,
asked his neighbors about it, stooped down in order to look under
the chairs and the guests' feet. And when Gaga did her best to
quiet him:
"It's a nuisance," he murmured, "my initials and my coronet are
worked in the corner. They may compromise me."
"I say, Monsieur Falamoise, Lamafoise, Mafaloise!" shouted
Foucarmont, who thought it exceedingly witty thus to disfigure the
young man's name ad infinitum.
But La Faloise grew wroth and talked with a stutter about his
ancestry. He threatened to send a water bottle at Foucarmont's
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: ruin--when it shone and gleamed so brightly that the church clock
of St Sepulchre's so often pointing to the hour of death, was
legible as in broad day, and the vane upon its steeple-top
glittered in the unwonted light like something richly jewelled--
when blackened stone and sombre brick grew ruddy in the deep
reflection, and windows shone like burnished gold, dotting the
longest distance in the fiery vista with their specks of
brightness--when wall and tower, and roof and chimney-stack, seemed
drunk, and in the flickering glare appeared to reel and stagger--
when scores of objects, never seen before, burst out upon the view,
and things the most familiar put on some new aspect--then the mob
Barnaby Rudge |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: and trousers, but still copiously perspiring; and when he turned
upon the prisoner a large meaningless countenance, that was (like
Bardolph's) "all whelks and bubuckles," the dullest might have been
prepared for grief. Here was a stupid man, sleepy with the heat
and fretful at the interruption, whom neither appeal nor argument
could reach.
THE COMMISSARY. You have no papers?
THE ARETHUSA. Not here.
THE COMMISSARY. Why?
THE ARETHUSA. I have left them behind in my valise.
THE COMMISSARY. You know, however, that it is forbidden to
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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 $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: about whatever was new to him--his reverence for wise old age,
and his ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts, soon brought
him into respectable notice.
One mild winter day, as he walked along the streets toward the Academy,
which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth--
some venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous--
all seemed inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as
well as for genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades.
He entered its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners.
The artfulness of this man! None knows so well as he how to pique
the curiosity of the reader--and how to disappoint it. He raises
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