| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: she had said to love:--
"Return to-morrow; to-day I belong to God."
But this slime permeated with gold and perfumes, this careless
indifference to all things, these unbridled passions, these religious
beliefs cast into that heart like diamonds into mire, this life begun,
and ended, in a hospital, these gambling chances transferred to the
soul, to the very existence,--in short, this great alchemy, for which
vice lit the fire beneath the crucible in which fortunes were melted
up and the gold of ancestors and the honor of great names evaporated,
proceeded from a CAUSE, a particular heredity, faithfully transmitted
from mother to daughter since the middle ages. The name of this woman
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: removed, on each shield a carving of the head of Caesar could be seen
on the umbo, or central knob. To the Jews, this seemed an evidence of
nothing short of idolatry. Antipas harangued them, while Vitellius,
who occupied a raised seat within the shadow of the colonnade, was
astonished at their fury. Tiberius had done well, he thought, to exile
four hundred of these people to Sardinia. Presently the Jews became so
violent that he ordered the shields to be removed.
Then the multitude surrounded the proconsul, imploring him to abolish
certain unjust laws, asking for privileges, or begging for alms. They
rent their clothing and jostled one another; and at last, in order to
drive them back, several slaves, armed with long staves, charged upon
Herodias |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: it was the White Moll, was it? Well, I'm listening - only I'd like
to know first how you got here to this shed."
"There's nothing in that!" he answered impatiently. "There's
something more important to talk about. I was coming over to the
garret, and just as I reached the corner I saw you go into the lane.
I followed you; that's all there is to that."
"Oh!" she sniffed. She stared at him for a moment. There was
something in which there was the uttermost of irony now, it seemed,
in this meeting between them. Last night she had striven to meet him
alone, and she had meant to devote to-night to the same purpose; and
she was here with him now, and in a place than which, in her wildest
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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 New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: at hand when he ought to be upon the scene of his assignation. The
more he reflected the less he liked the prospect, and as at that
moment an eddy in the crowd began to draw him in the direction of
the door, he suffered it to carry him away without resistance. The
eddy stranded him in a corner under the gallery, where his ear was
immediately struck with the voice of Madame Zephyrine. She was
speaking in French with the young man of the blond locks who had
been pointed out by the strange Britisher not half-an-hour before.
"I have a character at stake," she said, "or I would put no other
condition than my heart recommends. But you have only to say so
much to the porter, and he will let you go by without a word."
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