| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: your good deeds," said old Grossetete, taking Veronique's hand.
"Ah!" she replied with a sigh, "it is impossible to make everybody
rich."
At the beginning of this year an event occurred which was destined to
change the whole interior life of this woman and to transform the
splendid expression of her countenance into something far more
interesting in the eyes of painters.
Becoming uneasy about his health, Graslin, to his wife's despair, no
longer desired to live on the ground-floor. He returned to the
conjugal chamber and allowed himself to be nursed. The news soon
spread throughout Limoges that Madame Graslin was pregnant. Her
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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 Mountains by Stewart Edward White: had broken to little bits. Men came running from
the bunk-house, only to go into spasms outside, to
roll over and over on the ground, clutching handfuls
of herbage in the agony of their delight.
At the end of the corral was a narrow chute. Into
this Sang escaped as into a burrow. The cow came
too. Sang, in desperation, seized a pole, but the cow
dashed such a feeble weapon aside. Sang caught
sight of a little opening, too small for cows, back
into the main corral. He squeezed through. The
cow crashed through after him, smashing the boards.
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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 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: with different miens beneath the same rags, the one having
always been a mendicant, and the other having once been a gentleman.
The staircase led to a very vast edifice which resembled a shed
which had been converted into a house. This edifice had, for its
intestinal tube, a long corridor, on which opened to right and left
sorts of compartments of varied dimensions which were inhabitable
under stress of circumstances, and rather more like stalls than cells.
These chambers received their light from the vague waste grounds
in the neighborhood.
All this was dark, disagreeable, wan, melancholy, sepulchral;
traversed according as the crevices lay in the roof or in the door,
Les Miserables |
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 House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: range of perception. Gryce and Miss Van Osburgh were, in short,
made for each other by every law of moral and physical
correspondence---"Yet they wouldn't look at each other," Lily
mused, "they never do. Each of them wants a creature of a
different race, of Jack's race and mine, with all sorts of
intuitions, sensations and perceptions that they don't even guess
the existence of. And they always get what they want."
She stood talking with her cousin and Miss Van Osburgh, till a
slight cloud on the latter's brow advised her that even cousinly
amenities were subject to suspicion, and Miss Bart, mindful of
the necessity of not exciting enmities at this crucial point of
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