| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: see there's a great deal more than you suspected
in all this affinity and soul mate craze, for in-
stance.
Not that I care much for the words "soul mate"
and "affinity" particularly; they have been so
VULGARIZED, somehow.
The Best People don't use those terms any more.
Psychic harmony is the new term.
The loveliest man explained all about it to us the
other day. I belong to a Little Group of Thinkers,
who take a serious interest in thee things, you
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: forms of pleasure deceived even the poor abbe for a time, who endured
his own trials all the better for thinking that his niece was happy,
after all.
Alencon at first thought the same. But there was one man more
difficult to deceive than the whole town put together. The Chevalier
de Valois, who had taken refuge on the Sacred Mount of the upper
aristocracy, now passed his life at the d'Esgrignons. He listened to
the gossip and the gabble, and he thought day and night upon his
vengeance. He meant to strike du Bousquier to the heart.
The poor abbe fully understood the baseness of this first and last
love of his niece; he shuddered as, little by little, he perceived the
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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 Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: the ancients called Polypus. But the animal which you have seen
likest to most of them is a sea-anemone.
Look now at this piece of fresh coral--for coral it is, though not
like the coral which your sister wears in her necklace. You see
it is full of pipes; in each of those pipes has lived what we will
call, for the time being, a tiny sea-anemone, joined on to his
brothers by some sort of flesh and skin; and all of them together
have built up, out of the lime in the sea-water, this common
house, or rather town, of lime.
But is it not strange and wonderful?
Of course it is: but so is everything when you begin to look into
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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 Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his
nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the
Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure;
and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more
and more self-conscious, mannered and affected. The number of
things that a small dog does naturally is strangely small.
Enjoying better spirits and not crushed under material cares, he is
far more theatrical than average man. His whole life, if he be a
dog of any pretension to gallantry, is spent in a vain show, and in
the hot pursuit of admiration. Take out your puppy for a walk, and
you will find the little ball of fur clumsy, stupid, bewildered,
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