| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: flapping rope across the bed.
Mr. Tod descended safely from
the chair, and endeavored to get up
again with the pail of water. He
intended to hang it from the hook,
dangling over the head of Tommy
Brock, in order to make a sort of
shower-bath, worked by a string,
through the window.
But, naturally, being a thin-
legged person (though vindictive
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: Platonic system, who has sometimes been thought to answer to God the
Father; or the world, in whom the Fathers of the Church seemed to recognize
'the firstborn of every creature.' Nor need we discuss at length how far
Plato agrees in the later Jewish idea of creation, according to which God
made the world out of nothing. For his original conception of matter as
something which has no qualities is really a negation. Moreover in the
Hebrew Scriptures the creation of the world is described, even more
explicitly than in the Timaeus, not as a single act, but as a work or
process which occupied six days. There is a chaos in both, and it would be
untrue to say that the Greek, any more than the Hebrew, had any definite
belief in the eternal existence of matter. The beginning of things
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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 Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: away.
On deck once more, she encountered the suave Senor Pages. He
stood at the rail surveying Rio's shores with that lip-curling
contempt of the Argentine for everything Brazilian. He regarded
Emma McChesney's radiant face.
"You are pleased with this--this Indian Rio?"
Mrs. McChesney paused to gaze with him at the receding shores.
"Like it! I'm afraid I haven't seen it. From here it looks
like Coney. But it buys like Seattle. Like it! Well, I should
say I do!"
"Ah, senora," exclaimed Pages, distressed, "wait! In six days
Emma McChesney & Co. |
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 Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: the more extraordinary because it was known to be the miser's custom
to lock up his sister at night in a bedroom with iron-barred windows.
As he grew older, Cornelius, constantly robbed, and always fearful of
being duped by men, came to hate mankind, with the one exception of
the king, whom he greatly respected. He fell into extreme misanthropy,
but, like most misers, his passion for gold, the assimilation, as it
were, of that metal with his own substance, became closer and closer,
and age intensified it. His sister herself excited his suspicions,
though she was perhaps more miserly, more rapacious than her brother
whom she actually surpassed in penurious inventions. Their daily
existence had something mysterious and problematical about it. The old
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