| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: fetch a mirror in which to look at what he had done. "Now let us go
and breakfast. Come, both of you, to my house. I have some smoked ham
and good wine. Hey! hey! in spite of the degenerate times we will talk
painting; we are strong ourselves. Here is a little man," he
continued, striking Nicolas Poussin on the shoulder, "who has the
faculty."
Observing the shabby cap of the youth, he pulled from his belt a
leathern purse from which he took two gold pieces and offered them to
him, saying,--
"I buy your drawing."
"Take them," said Porbus to Poussin, seeing that the latter trembled
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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 Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: meditated William's sister, but she could not arrive at any
satisfactory decision upon what she evidently thought his failure
in life. "I think it is well to see any one so happy an' makin'
the most of life just as it falls to hand," she said as she began
to put the daguerreotypes away again; but I reached out my
hand to see her mother's once more, a most flowerlike face of a
lovely young woman in quaint dress. There was in the eyes a look
of anticipation and joy, a far-off look that sought the horizon;
one often sees it in seafaring families, inherited by girls and
boys alike from men who spend their lives at sea, and are always
watching for distant sails or the first loom of the land. At sea
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