| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: cigarette smoke filled the room with an ambient, steamy vapor. The
two ladies had again set to work dipping lumps of sugar in brandy
and sucking the same. For twenty minutes at least they played and
sucked simultaneously when, the electric bell having rung a third
time, Zoe bustled into the room and roughly disturbed them, just as
if they had been her own friends.
"Look here, that's another ring. You can't stay where you are. If
many foiks call I must have the whole flat. Now off you go, off you
go!"
Mme Maloir was for finishing the game, but Zoe looked as if she was
going to pounce down on the cards, and so she decided to carry them
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: large handsome head and a large sallow seamed face--a striking
significant physiognomic total, the upper range of which, the great
political brow, the thick loose hair, the dark fuliginous eyes,
recalled even to a generation whose standard had dreadfully
deviated the impressive image, familiar by engravings and busts, of
some great national worthy of the earlier part of the mid-century.
He was of the personal type--and it was an element in the power and
promise that in their early time Strether had found in him--of the
American statesman, the statesman trained in "Congressional halls,"
of an elder day. The legend had been in later years that as the
lower part of his face, which was weak, and slightly crooked,
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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 Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: side and a vanquished one. The parents of the future pair try to
conclude the matter, which is purely commercial in their eyes, to
their own advantage; and this leads to the trickery, shrewdness, and
deception of such negotiations. Generally the husband alone is
initiated into the secret of these discussions, and the wife is kept,
like Natalie, in ignorance of the stipulations which make her rich or
poor.
As he left the house, Paul reflected that, thanks to the cleverness of
his notary, his fortune was almost entirely secured from injury. If
Madame Evangelista did not live apart from her daughter their united
household would have an income of more than a hundred thousand francs
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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 Touchstone by Edith Wharton: claim.
Early in the winter the Glennards took possession of the little
house that was to cost them almost nothing. The change brought
Glennard the immediate relief of seeing less of his wife, and of
being protected, in her presence, by the multiplied preoccupations
of town life. Alexa, who could never appear hurried, showed the
smiling abstraction of a pretty woman to whom the social side of
married life has not lost its novelty. Glennard, with the
recklessness of a man fresh from his first financial imprudence,
encouraged her in such little extravagances as her good sense at
first resisted. Since they had come to town, he argued, they
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