| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: But if you really expect to find a respectable woman to chaperon
YOU, keep your views to yourself."
Harmony, a bruised and wounded thing, crept into Jimmy's room and
sank on her knees beside the bed. One small hand lay on the
coverlet; she dared not touch it for fear of waking him--but she
laid her cheek close to it for comfort. When Peter came in, much
later, he found the boy wide awake and Harmony asleep, a crumpled
heap beside the bed.
"I think she's been crying," Jimmy whispered. "She's been sobbing
in her sleep. And strike a match, Peter; there may be more mice."
CHAPTER XVIII
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: "That refers to me, I suppose," she said calmly.
"Every day since we've been here you've done something to make me
appear ridiculous," he went on. "Of course, so long as it amuses you,
you're welcome; but we have to remember that we are going to spend our
lives together. I asked you, only this morning, for example, to come
out and take a turn with me in the garden. I was waiting for you ten
minutes, and you never came. Every one saw me waiting. The stable-boys
saw me. I was so ashamed that I went in. Then, on the drive you hardly
spoke to me. Henry noticed it. Every one notices it. . . . You find no
difficulty in talking to Henry, though."
She noted these various complaints and determined philosophically to
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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 A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: many hopes defeated by a change of weather! He was hanging there to a
granite rock, his arm extended like that of an Indian fakir, while his
father, sitting in their hovel, awaited, in silence and darkness, a
meal of the coarsest bread and shell-fish, if the sea permitted.
"Do you ever drink wine?" I asked.
"Three or four times a year," he replied.
"Well, you shall drink it to-day,--you and your father; and we will
send you some white bread."
"You are very kind, monsieur."
"We will give you your dinner if you will show us the way along the
shore to Batz, where we wish to see the tower which overlooks the bay
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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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: pointed him out as there and then disqualified to be regarded longer
as a member of the brotherhood of peers.[6]
[5] But see Aristot. "Pol." ii. 9, 32.
[6] Grote, "H. G." viii. 81; "Hell." III. iii. 5.
It may be added, that there was no doubt as to the great antiquity of
this code of laws. The point is clear so far, that Lycurgus himself is
said to have lived in the days of the Heraclidae.[7] But being of so
long standing, these laws, even at this day, still are stamped in the
eyes of other men with all the novelty of youth. And the most
marvellous thing of all is that, while everybody is agreed to praise
these remarkable institutions, there is not a single state which cares
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