| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: poise of his lithe body as it gave with the motions of the horse,
proclaimed him a born rider; so finished, indeed, that his very
ease seemed to discount the performance. Steamboat had a
malevolent red eye that glared hatred at the oppressor man, and
to-day it lived up to its reputation of being the most vicious
and untamed animal on the frontier. But, though it did its best
to unseat the rider and trample him underfoot, there was no
moment when the issue seemed in doubt save once. The horse flung
itself backward in a somersault, risking its own neck in order to
break its master's. But he was equal to the occasion; and when
Steamboat staggered again to its feet Bannister was still in the
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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 Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: need the immense machinery and outfit which ruin historical painters;
he has never recognized within himself sufficient faculty to attempt
high-art, and he therefore clings to easel painting.
At the beginning of the month of December of that year, a season at
which the bourgeois of Paris conceive, periodically, the burlesque
idea of perpetuating their forms and figures already too bulky in
themselves, Pierre Grassou, who had risen early, prepared his palette,
and lighted his stove, was eating a roll steeped in milk, and waiting
till the frost on his windows had melted sufficiently to let the full
light in. The weather was fine and dry. At this moment the artist, who
ate his bread with that patient, resigned air that tells so much,
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