| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: the less he vowed to himself to conquer, never to give way. In him the
unswerving virtue of an apostle was softened by pity that sprang from
inexhaustible indulgence. In the friendship grown old already, one was
the worshiper, and that one was David; Lucien ruled him like a woman
sure of love, and David loved to give way. He felt that his friend's
physical beauty implied a real superiority, which he accepted, looking
upon himself as one made of coarser and commoner human clay.
"The ox for patient labor in the fields, the free life for the bird,"
he thought to himself. "I will be the ox, and Lucien shall be the
eagle."
So for three years these friends had mingled the destinies bright with
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: doctor of psychology, he might have been pardoned for divining in the
girl a passion of childish vanity, self-love IN EXCELSIS, and no more.
It is to be understood that I have been painting chaos and describing
the inarticulate. Every lineament that appears is too precise, almost
every word used too strong. Take a finger-post in the mountains on a
day of rolling mists; I have but copied the names that appear upon the
pointers, the names of definite and famous cities far distant, and now
perhaps basking in sunshine; but Christina remained all these hours, as
it were, at the foot of the post itself, not moving, and enveloped in
mutable and blinding wreaths of haze.
The day was growing late and the sunbeams long and level, when she sat
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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 Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: eleven. He then set to work again on the copy he had begun the night
before, which was lying on the table.
On going downstairs we asked the price of that room, and were told
fifteen francs a month.
In the course of a few days, we were fully informed as to the mode of
life of Z. Marcas. He did copying, at so much a sheet no doubt, for a
law-writer who lived in the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle. He
worked half the night; after sleeping from six till ten, he began
again and wrote till three. Then he went out to take the copy home
before dinner, which he ate at Mizerai's in the Rue Michel-le-Comte,
at a cost of nine sous, and came in to bed at six o'clock. It became
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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 New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: opened, there was a manifest improvement in gaiety. Only two were
seated - one in a chair in the recess of the window, with his head
hanging and his hands plunged deep into his trouser pockets, pale,
visibly moist with perspiration, saying never a word, a very wreck
of soul and body; the other sat on the divan close by the chimney,
and attracted notice by a trenchant dissimilarity from all the
rest. He was probably upwards of forty, but he looked fully ten
years older; and Florizel thought he had never seen a man more
naturally hideous, nor one more ravaged by disease and ruinous
excitements. He was no more than skin and bone, was partly
paralysed, and wore spectacles of such unusual power, that his eyes
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