| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: Beauty without expression is perhaps an imposture. This imperturbable
set smile that the young wife always wore when she looked at Granville
seemed to be a sort of Jesuitical formula of happiness, by which she
thought to satisfy all the requirements of married life. Her charity
was an offence, her soulless beauty was monstrous to those who knew
her; the mildness of her speech was an irritation: she acted, not on
feeling, but on duty.
There are faults which may yield in a wife to the stern lessons of
experience, or to a husband's warnings; but nothing can counteract
false ideas of religion. An eternity of happiness to be won, set in
the scale against worldly enjoyment, triumphs over everything and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: entire sphere of human relations that imaginative sympathy which in
the sphere of Art is the sole secret of creation. He understood
the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce
misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the
rich. Some one wrote to me in trouble, 'When you are not on your
pedestal you are not interesting.' How remote was the writer from
what Matthew Arnold calls 'the Secret of Jesus.' Either would have
taught him that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and
if you want an inscription to read at dawn and at night-time, and
for pleasure or for pain, write up on the walls of your house in
letters for the sun to gild and the moon to silver, 'Whatever
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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 Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: me further, O Zadok, is it possible for me to see this queen whom
my father turned to stone?"
"Nothing is easier," said Zadok.
"Then," said the young man, "I command you to take me to where
she is, so that I may see her with mine own eyes."
"I hear and obey," said the Demon.
He seized the young man by the girdle, and in an instant flew
away with him to a hanging-garden that lay before the queen's
palace.
"Thou art the first man," said Zadok, "who has seen what thou art
about to see for seven-and-thirty years. Come, I will show thee a
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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 Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]: morsels, dispensed from the butler's pantry window with great regularity three
times a day), he at once, at her command, relaxed his hold on the little
jack-rabbit. The poor little thing was still breathing, breathing indeed with
all his might and main, so that his heart thumped against his little brown
sides with all the regularity of a Rider Engine. Tattine's first thought was
for the rabbit, and she held it close to her, stroking it with one little
brown trembling hand and saying, "There! there! Hush, you little dear; you're
safe now, don't be frightened! Tattine wouldn't hurt you for the world." Her
next thought was for Doctor, and she turned on him with a torrent of abuse,
that ought to have made the hair of that young M.D. stand on end. "Oh, you
cruel, CRUEL dog! whatever made you do such a thing as this? I never dreamt it
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