| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: perplexity, she went on, after pondering on the selection of a
second lump of sugar, "Why, I've just come from the reading, you
know--the reading at the Waldorf."
"I haven't been in town long enough to know anything," said
Glennard, taking the cup his wife handed him. "Who has been
reading what?"
"That lovely girl from the South--Georgie--Georgie what's her
name--Mrs. Dresham's protegee--unless she's YOURS, Mr. Dresham!
Why, the big ball-room was PACKED, and all the women were crying
like idiots--it was the most harrowing thing I ever heard--"
"What DID you hear?" Glennard asked; and his wife interposed:
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: doors, exasperated him greatly.
"Why don't that extravagant fellow get you a
servant?" he asked impatiently one mild after-
noon. She had thrown something over her head to
run out for a while.
"I don't know," said the pale Bessie, wearily,
staring away with her heavy-lidded, grey, and un-
expectant glance. There were always smudgy
shadows under her eyes, and she did not seem able
to see any change or any end to her life.
"You wait till you get married, my dear," said
To-morrow |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White: swung open the gate. The pony bowed his head delightedly. He
was not tired, but his reins depended straight to the ground, and
it was a point of honour with him to stand. At the saddle born,
in its sling, hung the riata, the "rope" without which no cowman
ever stirs abroad, but which Senor Johnson had rarely used of
late. Senor Johnson threw the reins over, seized the pony's mane
in his left hand, held the pommel with his right, and so swung
easily aboard, the pony's jump helping him to the saddle. Wheel
tracks led down the trail. He followed them.
Truth to tell, Senor Johnson had very little idea of what he was
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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 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: all her knowledge and all her ignorance. If she questioned herself at
all, it was to ask whether she deserved so great a happiness, and what
she had done that Heaven should send her such an angel. She wanted to
be worthy of that love, to perpetuate it, to make it her own forever,
and to gently end her career of frivolity in the paradise she now
foresaw. As for coquetting, quibbling, resisting, she never once
thought of it. She was thinking of something very different!--of the
grandeur of men of genius, and the certainty which her heart divined
that they would never subject the woman they chose to ordinary laws.
Here begins one of those unseen comedies, played in the secret regions
of the consciousness between two beings of whom one will be the dupe
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