| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: grace and spirit.
Elsewhere in Europe you will find elegant manners, cordiality, genial
fellowship, and knowledge; but only in Paris, in this drawing-room,
and those to which I have alluded, does the particular wit abound
which gives an agreeable and changeful unity to all these social
qualities, an indescribable river-like flow which makes this profusion
of ideas, of definitions, of anecdotes, of historical incidents,
meander with ease. Paris, the capital of taste, alone possesses the
science which makes conversation a tourney in which each type of wit
is condensed into a shaft, each speaker utters his phrase and casts
his experience in a word, in which every one finds amusement,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: Her furs were voluminous. Her hat was hidden beneath the cascades
of a green willow plume. A green willow plume would make Edna May
look sophisticated. She walked with that humping hip movement
which city women acquire. She carried a jangling handful of
useless gold trinkets. Her heels were too high, and her hair too
yellow, and her lips too red, and her nose too white, and her
cheeks too pink. Everything about her was "too," from the black
stitching on her white gloves to the buckle of brilliants in her
hat. The city had her, body and soul, and had fashioned her in its
metallic cast. You would have sworn that she had never seen
flowers growing in a field.
Buttered Side Down |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: experiences in the entertainment of guests. With her dolls,
the domestic relations and affections.
No science has ever originatedmand been carried to any
degree of perfection in Asia. There is no reason why this
statement should cause the noses of Europeans and Americans
to twitch in derision and pride, for there is another fact
equally momentous in favor of the Asiatics,--viz., no religion
that originated outside of Asia has ever been carried to any
degree of perfection.
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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 Adieu by Honore de Balzac: none whose costume did not present some laughable singularity. But in
presence of such amusing sights the men themselves were grave and
gloomy. The silence was broken only by the snapping of the wood, the
crackling of the flames, the distant murmur of the camps, and the
blows of the sabre given to what remained of Bichette in search of her
tenderest morsels. A few miserable creatures, perhaps more weary than
the rest, were sleeping; when one of their number rolled into the fire
no one attempted to help him out. These stern logicians argued that if
he were not dead his burns would warn him to find a safer place. If
the poor wretch waked in the flames and perished, no one cared. Two or
three soldiers looked at each other to justify their own indifference
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