| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: do not correct him with mud--never, on any account, throw mud at him,
because it will spoil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little,
for then you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate
attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time
your hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person,
and possibly the skin, in spots.
If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply
that you won't. It is better and more becoming to intimate
that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly
in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment.
You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: down to the level of yours,--that just as the diamond alone can cut
the diamond, so it is only one inquisitive man who can defeat another
inquisitive man."
Fleury. "'Inquisitive man' stands for 'spy.'"
Poiret. "I don't understand."
Bixiou. "Very well; try again some other time."
Monsieur Rabourdin, after taking Sebastien to his room, had gone
straight to the minister; but the minister was at the Chamber of
Deputies. Rabourdin went at once to the Chamber, where he wrote a note
to his Excellency, who was at that moment in the tribune engaged in a
hot discussion. Rabourdin waited, not in the conference hall, but in
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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 Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: I have seen even better than that. This time, my subject is the
Silky Epeira (Epeira sericea, OLIV.), with a broad, festooned,
silvery abdomen. Like that of the other, her web is large, upright
and 'signed' with a zigzag ribbon. I place upon it a Praying
Mantis, {18} a well-developed specimen, quite capable of changing
roles, should circumstances permit, and herself making a meal off
her assailant. It is a question no longer of capturing a peaceful
Locust, but a fierce and powerful ogre, who would rip open the
Epeira's paunch with one blow of her harpoons.
Will the Spider dare? Not immediately. Motionless in the centre
of her net, she consults her strength before attacking the
The Life of the Spider |
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 Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: fancy, his presence of mind had always been complete, his
eloquence remarkable; and at this disparity between the
rehearsal and the performance, he began to be seized with a
panic of apprehension. Here, on the very threshold of
adventure, suppose him ignominiously to fail; suppose that
after ten, twenty, or sixty seconds of still uninterrupted
silence, the lady should touch the check-string and re-
deposit him, weighed and found wanting, on the common street!
Thousands of persons of no mind at all, he reasoned, would be
found more equal to the part; could, that very instant, by
some decisive step, prove the lady's choice to have been well
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