| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: meals he saw that their china, glass, and all other little articles
betrayed the utmost poverty; and yet, though the chipped and mended
dishes and tureens were those of the poorest families and provoked
pity, the forks and spoons were of silver.
Monsieur Clapart, clothed in a shabby surtout, his feet in broken
slippers, always wore green spectacles, and exhibited, whenever he
removed his shabby cap of a bygone period, a pointed skull, from the
top of which trailed a few dirty filaments which even a poet could
scarcely call hair. This man, of wan complexion, seemed timorous, but
withal tyrannical.
In this dreary apartment, which faced the north and had no other
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: Who make a god of a wheel, who worship their
whirring bands,
They are flinging the life of a people, raw, to the
brute machines.
Dull-eyed, weary, and old--old in his early teens--
Stunted and stupid and twisted, marred in the
mills of grief,
Can your factories fashion a Man of this thing--
a Man and a Chief?
Dumb is the heart of him now, at the time when
his heart should sing--
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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 Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: her father's regard.
Happily they had no one else to wait for, and it heartened her
mightily to think that she had ordered the promptest possible
service of the dinner. Capes stood beside Miss Stanley, who was
beaming unnaturally, and Mr. Stanley, in his effort to seem at
ease, took entire possession of the hearthrug.
"You found the flat easily?" said Capes in the pause. "The
numbers are a little difficult to see in the archway. They ought
to put a lamp."
Her father declared there had been no difficulty.
"Dinner is served, m'm," said the efficient parlor-maid in the
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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]: into the water he jumped, keeping the reins in his hand, and then, getting a
little ahead of Barney, he began to walk and pull. Now fortunately, there is
nothing like the force of example, which simply means that when Barney saw
Rudolph walking and pulling he began to walk and pull too.
Meantime, while Patrick and his wife were thinking that the children had had
plenty of time to reach home before the storm, there was great anxiety in the
two homes where those three dear children lived. Patrick the coachman and
Philip the groom had been sent with the wagonette by the main road to Patrick
Kirk's--Patrick to bring the children and Philip to take charge of Barney, but
as the children were coming home, or rather trying to come home, by the ford,
of course they missed them.
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