| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: The good people of Glasgow did it first, I think; and now the good
people of Manchester, and of other northern towns, have done it,
and have saved many a human life thereby already. But it must be
done, some day, all over England and Wales, and great part of
Scotland. For the mountain tops and moors, my boy, by a beautiful
law of nature, compensate for their own poverty by yielding a
wealth which the rich lowlands cannot yield. You do not
understand? Then see. Yon moor above can grow neither corn nor
grass. But one thing it can grow, and does grow, without which we
should have no corn nor grass, and that is--water. Not only does
far more rain fall up there than falls here down below, but even
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: shoulder and walked rapidly up the avenue.
"Who can it be that Michu is angry with?" said Marthe to her mother.
"Ever since he heard of Monsieur Malin's arrival he has been gloomy,"
replied the old woman. "But it is getting damp here, let us go in."
After the two women had settled themselves in the chimney corner they
heard Couraut's bark.
"There's my husband returning!" cried Marthe.
Michu passed up the stairs; his wife, uneasy, followed him to their
bedroom.
"See if any one is about," he said to her, in a voice of some emotion.
"No one," she replied. "Marianne is in the field with the cow, 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 Cruise of the Jasper B. by Don Marquis: of baffled rage, relaxed. As Cleggett paused the sneer came back
upon Loge's lips.
"Boob," he said quietly, "boob is the word. Look above you."
A sharp metallic click overhead gave point to Loge's words.
Looking up, Cleggett saw that a trap-door had opened in the
ceiling, and through the aperture Pierre, who had left the room
some moments before with the bartender, was pointing a revolver,
which he had just cocked, at Cleggett's head. He sighted along
the barrel with an eager, anticipatory smile upon his face;
Pierre would, no doubt, have preferred to see a man boiled in oil
rather than merely shot, but shooting was something, and Pierre
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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 Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: loved Dinah too sincerely to regard her degradation as a means of
triumph one day; he was all pity and devotion; he really loved her.
The care and nursing of the infant, its cries, the quiet needed for
the mother during the first few days, and the ubiquity of Madame
Piedefer, were so entirely adverse to literary labors, that Lousteau
moved up to the three rooms taken on the first floor for the old
bigot. The journalist, obliged to go to the first performances without
Dinah, and living apart from her, found an indescribable charm in the
use of his liberty. More than once he submitted to be taken by the arm
and dragged off to some jollification; more than once he found himself
at the house of a friend's mistress in the heart of bohemia. He again
The Muse of the Department |
