| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: /juge de paix/; "and that portion of the press which pleads for right
ideas finds no echo."
The mayor looked at Monsieur Clousier in amazement. Madame Graslin,
glad to find in a simple /juge de paix/ a man whose mind was occupied
with serious questions, said to Monsieur Roubaud, her neighbor, "Do
you know Monsieur Clousier?"
"Not rightly until to-day, madame. You are doing miracles," he
answered in a whisper. "And yet, look at his brow, how noble in shape!
Isn't it like the classic or traditional brow given by sculptors to
Lycurgus and the Greek sages? The revolution of July has an evidently
retrograde tendency," said the doctor (who might in his student days
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: The awaking traffic, the bestirring birds,
The consentaneous trill of tiny song
That weaves round monumental cornices
A passing charm of beauty. Most of all,
For your light foot I wearied, and your knock
That was the glad reveille of my day.
Lo, now, when to your task in the great house
At morning through the portico you pass,
One moment glance, where by the pillared wall
Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,
Sit now unworshipped, the rude monument
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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 The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: "You are going with us?" asked Pokorny.
"Yes, he will accompany you," replied the commissioner. "This is
detective Muller, sir. By a mere chance, he happened to be on hand
to take charge of this case and he will remain in charge, although
it may be wasting his talents which we need for more difficult
problems. If you or any one else have anything to tell us, it must
be told only to me or to Muller. And before you leave to look at
the body, I would like to know whether the dead man owned a watch,
or rather whether he had it with him on the day of the murder."
"Yes, sir; he did have a watch, a gold watch," answered Mrs.
Klingmayer.
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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 her bed-slippers and her nurse's wrapper, that was lying across a chair,
and then just as noiselessly stole downstairs, and unlocking the door leading
to the back porch, hurried to open the gate of the kennel, for simply to let
the puppies run she knew would stop their barking. Tattine was right about
that, but just as she swung the gate open, a happy thought struck those four
little puppies' minds, and as she started to run back to the house, all four
of them buried their sharp little teeth in the frill of Priscilla's wrapper.
Still Tattine succeeded in making her way across the lawn back to the door,
although she had four puppies in tow and was almost weak from laughing.
She knew perfectly well what a funny picture she must make, with the wrapper
that was so much too large for her, only kept in place by the big puff
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