| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: supposed: Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart from
his mysterious gift of languages, and his almost superhuman
faculty for knowing how to address letters to eminent people,
and in what terms to conclude them, he had a smattering of
archaeology and general culture on which Mrs. Hicks had learned
to depend--her own memory being, alas, so inadequate to the
range of her interests.
Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not Miss
Hicks's way to mother her parents. She was exceedingly kind to
them, but left them, as it were, to bring themselves up as best
they could, while she pursued her own course of self-
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: effort for us, and a reward to him. To say to another!--"
She did not end her sentence, but rose, bowed to the old man, and
withdrew into her private apartments, the doors of which, opening and
closing behind her, had a language of their own to his sagacious ears.
"Ah! the mischief!" thought he; "what a woman! she is either a sly one
or an angel"; and he got into his hired coach, the horses of which
were stamping on the pavement of the silent courtyard, while the
coachman was asleep on his box after cursing for the hundredth time
his tardy customer.
The next morning about eight o'clock the old gentleman mounted the
stairs of a house in the rue de l'Observance where Octave de Camps was
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