| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: as a /feuilleton/, blithe as only those can be that are deep in debt
and drink deep to match, and finally--for here I come to my point--hot
lovers and what lovers! Picture to yourself Lovelace, and Henri
Quatre, and the Regent, and Werther, and Saint-Preux, and Rene, and
the Marechal de Richelieu--think of all these in a single man, and you
will have some idea of their way of love. What lovers! Eclectic of all
things in love, they will serve up a passion to a woman's order; their
hearts are like a bill of fare in a restaurant. Perhaps they have
never read Stendhal's /De l'Amour/, but unconsciously they put it in
practice. They have by heart their chapters--Love-Taste, Love-Passion,
Love-Caprice, Love-Crystalized, and more than all, Love-Transient. 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 Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]: could "higher it," as Tattine said, or lower it, or swing it clear of the fire
on either side. At the end of the branch away from the fire hung a chain, with
a few blocks tied into it, for a weight, so that you lifted the weight with
one hand when you wished to change the position of the branch with the other,
and then let it rest on the ground again at the spot where you wanted the pole
to stay. You see, the great advantage of this was that, when you wished to see
how things were going on inside of the kettle, or to stop its boiling
instantly--you could just swing it away from the fire in no time, and not run
the risk of burning face or hands, or petticoats, if you belong to the
petticoat family.`
"Now," panted Tattine, for it was her turn to be breathless with running,
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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 Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: spontaneity and character of Wilde's style if he had tried to
harmonise it with the diction demanded by the French Academy. It
was never composed with any idea of presentation. Madame Bernhardt
happened to say she wished Wilde would write a play for her; he
replied in jest that he had done so. She insisted on seeing the
manuscript, and decided on its immediate production, ignorant or
forgetful of the English law which prohibits the introduction of
Scriptural characters on the stage. With his keen sense of the
theatre Wilde would never have contrived the long speech of Salome
at the end in a drama intended for the stage, even in the days of
long speeches. His threat to change his nationality shortly after
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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 Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: "No--seems to me I did, then again it seems to me I didn't."
"I didn't either; but it had its bag along, I noticed that."
"So did I. How can there be a ghost-bag, Tom?"
"Sho! I wouldn't be as ignorant as that if I was you,
Huck Finn. Whatever a ghost has, turns to ghost-stuff.
They've got to have their things, like anybody else.
You see, yourself, that its clothes was turned
to ghost-stuff. Well, then, what's to hender its bag
from turning, too? Of course it done it."
That was reasonable. I couldn't find no fault with it.
Bill Withers and his brother Jack come along by, talking,
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