| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: "four-piecee horse"; Coronado; the incongruous scene in the
ballroom; and, last of all, Josie Herrick in white duck and kid
shoes, giving her hand to Moran in her boots and belt, hatless as
ever, her sleeves rolled up to above the elbows, her white, strong
arm extended, her ruddy face, and pale, milk-blue eyes gravely
observant, her heavy braids, yellow as ripening rye, hanging over
her shoulder and breast.
A sudden explosion of cold wind, striking down blanket-wise and
bewildering from out the west, made Wilbur look up quickly. The
gray sky seemed scudding along close overhead. The bay, the
narrow channel of the Golden Gate, the outside ocean, were all
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: yet, simply by pressing against the air above our heads, they had
their motion turned into heat, till they burned themselves up into
trains of fiery dust. So remember that wherever you have pressure
you have heat, and that the pressure of the upper rocks upon the
lower is quite enough, some think, to account for the older and
lower rocks being harder than the upper and newer ones.
But why should the lower rocks be older and the upper rocks newer?
You told me just now that the high mountains in Wales were ages
older than Windsor Forest, upon which we stand: but yet how much
lower we are here than if we were on a Welsh mountain.
Ah, my dear child, of course that puzzles you, and I am afraid it
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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 Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: she had received him at first rather coldly, he became the object of
her good graces before they had been many minutes alone together.
"How strange!" said Gazonal, looking round him disdainfully on the
furniture of the salon, the door of which his accomplices had left
half open, "that a woman like you should be allowed to live in such an
ill-furnished apartment."
"Ah, yes, indeed! but how can I help it? Massol is not rich; I am
hoping he will be made a minister."
"What a happy man!" cried Gazonal, heaving the sigh of a provincial.
"Good!" thought she. "I shall have new furniture, and get the better
of Carabine."
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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 Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: of the last quarter of the moon. The crescent of the first
quarter is that which rises about five or six o'clock in the
evening and is clear, gay, and fretted with silver; but the one
which rises after midnight is reddish, sad, and desolating--it is
the true Sabbath crescent. Every prowler by night has made the same
observation. The first, though slender as a thread, throws a faint,
joyous light which rejoices the heart and lines the ground with
distinct shadows; the last sheds hardly a dying glimmer, and is so
wan that it occasions hardly any shadows.
In the distance, I perceived the somber mass of my garden, and, I
know not why, was seized with a feeling of uneasiness at the idea
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