| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: picture of Meissonier's would sell for many thousand dollars.
"And do you think, Loudon," he replied, "that a man who can
paint a thousand dollar picture has not grit enough to keep his
end up in the stock market? No, sir; this Mason (of whom you
speak) or our own American Bierstadt--if you were to put them
down in a wheat pit to-morrow, they would show their mettle.
Come, Loudon, my dear; heaven knows I have no thought but
your own good, and I will offer you a bargain. I start you again
next term with ten thousand dollars; show yourself a man, and
double it, and then (if you still wish to go to Paris, which I
know you won't) I'll let you go. But to let you run away as if
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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 King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: refused to the cry of the weary and dying is unholy, though it had
been blessed by every saint in heaven; and the water which is found
in the vessel of mercy is holy, though it had been defiled with corpses."
So saying, the dwarf stooped and plucked a lily that grew at his feet.
On its white leaves there hung three drops of clear dew.
And the dwarf shook them into the flask which Gluck held in his hand.
"Cast these into the river," he said, "and descend on the other side
of the mountains into the Treasure Valley. And so good speed."
As he spoke the figure of the dwarf became indistinct. The
playing colors of his robe formed themselves into a prismatic mist
of dewy light; he stood for an instant veiled with them as with 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 Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: involved millions! On the other, journalists, pandering to the
banker's self-love, were talking about the session of the day before,
and the impromptu speech of the great man. In the course of two long
hours Birotteau saw the banker three times, as he accompanied certain
persons of importance three steps from the door of his study. But
Francois Keller went to the door of the antechamber with the last, who
was General Foy.
"There is no hope for me!" thought Birotteau with a shrinking heart.
When the banker returned to his study, the troop of courtiers,
friends, and self-seekers pressed round him like dogs pursuing a
bitch. A few bold curs slipped, in spite of him, into the sanctum. The
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
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 God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: it are our passions and desires and fears. And it is aware of
itself not as a whole, but dispersedly as individual self-
consciousness, starting out dispersedly from every one of the
sentient creatures it has called into being. They look out for
their little moments, red-eyed and fierce, full of greed, full of
the passions of acquisition and assimilation and reproduction,
submitting only to brief fellowships of defence or aggression. They
are beings of strain and conflict and competition. They are living
substance still mingled painfully with the dust. The forms in which
this being clothes itself bear thorns and fangs and claws, are
soaked with poison and bright with threats or allurements, prey
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