| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: without knowledge of the reason. What if now it should be the
turn of the Hotel Plougastel! There was no real cause to fear it,
save that amid a turmoil imperfectly understood and therefore the
more awe-inspiring, the worst must be feared always.
The dreadful song so dreadfully sung, and the thunder of heavily
shod feet upon the roughly paved street, passed on and receded.
They breathed again, almost as if a miracle had saved them, to
yield to fresh alarm an instant later, when madame's young footman,
Jacques, the most trusted of her servants, burst into their presence
unceremoniously with a scared face, bringing the announcement that
a man who had just climbed over the garden wall professed himself a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: kind of personal shyness an intellectual audacity that was like a
deflected impulse of coquetry: one felt that if she had been
prettier she would have had emotions instead of ideas. She was in
fact even then what she had always remained: a genius capable of
the acutest generalizations, but curiously undiscerning where her
personal susceptibilities were concerned. Her psychology failed
her just where it serves most women and one felt that her brains
would never be a guide to her heart. Of all this, however,
Glennard thought little in the first year of their acquaintance.
He was at an age when all the gifts and graces are but so much
undiscriminated food to the ravening egoism of youth. In seeking
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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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: deep water, many rods from the shore. It was even supposed by some
that the pond had sunk, and this was one of the primitive forest
that formerly stood there. I find that even so long ago as 1792, in
a "Topographical Description of the Town of Concord," by one of its
citizens, in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, the author, after speaking of Walden and White Ponds, adds,
"In the middle of the latter may be seen, when the water is very
low, a tree which appears as if it grew in the place where it now
stands, although the roots are fifty feet below the surface of the
water; the top of this tree is broken off, and at that place
measures fourteen inches in diameter." In the spring of '49 I
Walden |
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 Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: cab, was on foot, and slipped in by the door in the Rue du Petit-
Lion, as if he were stealing into some house of ill fame. The
house surgeon, naturally possessed by curiosity, knowing his
master's opinions, and being himself a rabid follower of Cabanis
(Cabaniste en dyable, with the y, which in Rabelais seems to
convey an intensity of devilry)--Bianchon stole into the church,
and was not a little astonished to see the great Desplein, the
atheist, who had no mercy on the angels--who give no work to the
lancet, and cannot suffer from fistula or gastritis--in short,
this audacious scoffer kneeling humbly, and where? In the Lady
Chapel, where he remained through the mass, giving alms for the
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