| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: once rigid and flashing, stern and calm. While in this eagle eye
earthly emotions seemed in some sort extinct, the lean, parched face
also bore traces of unhappy passions and great deeds done. The nose,
which was narrow and aquiline, was so long that it seemed to hang on
by the nostrils. The bones of the face were strongly marked by the
long, straight wrinkles that furrowed the hollow cheeks. Every line in
the countenance looked dark. It would suggest the bed of a torrent
where the violence of former floods was recorded in the depth of the
water-courses, which testified to some terrible, unceasing turmoil.
Like the ripples left by the oars of a boat on the waters, deep lines,
starting from each side of his nose, marked his face strongly, and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: flinging a wide glare of gaslight into the street, of which it formed a sort
of public adjunct, absorbing and emitting the passersby promiscuously.
The young Englishmen went in with everyone else, from curiosity, and saw
a couple of hundred men sitting on divans along a great marble-paved corridor,
with their legs stretched out, together with several dozen more standing
in a queue, as at the ticket office of a railway station, before a
brilliantly illuminated counter of vast extent. These latter persons,
who carried portmanteaus in their hands, had a dejected, exhausted look;
their garments were not very fresh, and they seemed to be rendering
some mysterious tribute to a magnificent young man with a waxed mustache,
and a shirtfront adorned with diamond buttons, who every now and
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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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: guide-book?' I asked, and both said, 'No, not at all!' Their
grimace was a picture when I showed the original.
I trust your health and that of Mrs. Hamerton keep better; your
last account was a poor one. I was unable to make out the visit I
had hoped, as (I do not know if you heard of it) I had a very
violent and dangerous haemorrhage last spring. I am almost glad to
have seen death so close with all my wits about me, and not in the
customary lassitude and disenchantment of disease. Even thus
clearly beheld I find him not so terrible as we suppose. But,
indeed, with the passing of years, the decay of strength, the loss
of all my old active and pleasant habits, there grows more and more
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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 When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: air, and he has worked us like nailers all day. I've a blister on
my right palm, and Harbison got shocked while he was wiring the
place, and nearly fell over the parapet. We bought out two
full-sized florists by telephone."
It was the most amazing transformation. At each corner a pole had
been erected, and wires crossed the roof diagonally, hung with
red and amber bulbs. Around the chimneys had been massed
evergreen trees in tubs, hiding their brick-and-mortar ugliness,
and among the trees tiny lights were strung. Along the parapet
were rows of geometrical boxwood plants in bright red crocks, and
the flaps of a crimson and white tent had been thrown open,
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