| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: it, as particularly a sea-horse carefully preserved, and perfect in
all its parts; two Roman urns full of ashes of human bodies, and
supposed to be above 1,700 years old; besides a great many valuable
medals and ancient coins. My friend who gave me this account, and
of whom I think I may say he speaks without bias, mentions this
gentleman, Mr. White, with some warmth as a very valuable person in
his particular employ of a surgeon. I only repeat his words. "Mr.
White," says he, "to whom the whole town and country are greatly
indebted and obliged to pray for his life, is our most skilful
surgeon." These, I say, are his own words, and I add nothing to
them but this, that it is happy for a town to have such a surgeon,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: exist, my curiosity was roused to the highest pitch, for my soul
passed into the body of the clarionet player.
The fiddle and the flageolet were neither of them interesting; their
faces were of the ordinary type among the blind--earnest, attentive,
and grave. Not so the clarionet player; any artist or philosopher must
have come to a stop at the sight of him.
Picture to yourself a plaster mask of Dante in the red lamplight, with
a forest of silver-white hair above the brows. Blindness intensified
the expression of bitterness and sorrow in that grand face of his; the
dead eyes were lighted up, as it were, by a thought within that broke
forth like a burning flame, lit by one sole insatiable desire, written
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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 Aspern Papers by Henry James: literary work, some reading and writing to do, so that I must
be quiet, and yet if possible a great deal in the open air--
that's why I have felt that a garden is really indispensable.
I appeal to your own experience," I went on, smiling.
"Now can't I look at yours?"
"I don't know, I don't understand," the poor woman murmured,
planted there and letting her embarrassed eyes wander all
over my strangeness.
"I mean only from one of those windows--such grand ones
as you have here--if you will let me open the shutters."
And I walked toward the back of the house. When I had advanced
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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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: away, and I made up my mind to live, but to wear gloom as a king
wears purple: never to smile again: to turn whatever house I
entered into a house of mourning: to make my friends walk slowly
in sadness with me: to teach them that melancholy is the true
secret of life: to maim them with an alien sorrow: to mar them
with my own pain. Now I feel quite differently. I see it would be
both ungrateful and unkind of me to pull so long a face that when
my friends came to see me they would have to make their faces still
longer in order to show their sympathy; or, if I desired to
entertain them, to invite them to sit down silently to bitter herbs
and funeral baked meats. I must learn how to be cheerful and
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