| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: swallowed them up,--they were gone. And again the bubbles of light
shot, and sailed, and undulated, growing thicker and thicker and
more wildly confused in their movements.
The closet door to the right of the fireplace now opened, and from
the aperture there came the form of an aged woman. In her hand she
held letters,--the very letters over which I had seen THE Hand
close; and behind her I heard a footstep. She turned round as if
to listen, and then she opened the letters and seemed to read; and
over her shoulder I saw a livid face, the face as of a man long
drowned,--bloated, bleached, seaweed tangled in its dripping hair;
and at her feet lay a form as of a corpse; and beside the corpse
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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 Purse by Honore de Balzac: he looked at Adelaide's mother, but he saw nothing in her
countenance but the expression of the frankest good-nature; no
double meaning marred its charm; its keenness was not
perifidious, its humor seemed kindly, and no trace of remorse
disturbed its equanimity.
He sat down to the card-table. Adelaide took side with the
painter, saying that he did not know piquet, and needed a
partner.
All through the game Madame de Rouville and her daughter
exchanged looks of intelligence, which alarmed Hippolyte all the
more because he was winning; but at last a final hand left 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 Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: guineas apiece the last few days. To my great joy Miss Coutts has
this moment written me that she has two for our use, and asks us to
take an early dinner at five with her and accompany her.
LETTER: To I.P.D.
LONDON, June 8, 1849
I thank you, my dear Uncle, for your pleasant letter, which
contained as usual much that was interesting to me. And so Mr. and
Mrs. Lawrence are to be our successors. . . . Happy as we have been
here, I have a great satisfaction that we are setting rather than
rising; that we have done our work, instead of having it to do.
Like all our pleasures, those here are earned by fatigue and effort,
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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 The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: nearly drowned in the reservoir of the new water-works before he
was seven. He had a real pistol taken away from him by a real
policeman when he was ten. And he learnt to smoke, not with
pipes and brown paper and cane as Tom had done, but with a penny
packet of Boys of England American cigarettes. His language
shocked his father before he was twelve, and by that age, what
with touting for parcels at the station and selling the Bun Hill
Weekly Express, he was making three shillings a week, or more,
and spending it on Chips, Comic Cuts, Ally Sloper's Half-holiday,
cigarettes, and all the concomitants of a life of pleasure and
enlightenment. All of this without hindrance to his literary
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