| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: fellow! He has managed to live, as I did when a clerk, on six hundred
francs a year. What I care for above all is honesty, spotless
integrity; and when it is practised in such poverty as that, a man's a
man. For the slightest fault of that kind a clerk leaves my office."
"The lad is in a good school," thought Moreau.
For two whole years Oscar lived in the rue de Bethisy, a den of
pettifogging; for if ever that superannuated expression was applicable
to a lawyer's office, it was so in this case. Under this supervision,
both petty and able, he was kept to his regular hours and to his work
with such rigidity that his life in the midst of Paris was that of a
monk.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: in vain. A dozen times, at least, this happened ere the line
hinted he had given up the battle and would be towed in. He was
towed. The landing-net was useless for one of his size, and I
would not have him gaffed. I stepped into the shallows and
heaved him out with a respectful hand under the gill, for which
kindness he battered me about the legs with his tail, and I felt
the strength of him and was proud. California had taken my place
in the shallows, his fish hard held. I was up the bank lying
full length on the sweet-scented grass and gasping in company
with my first salmon caught, played and landed on an eight-ounce
rod. My hands were cut and bleeding, I was dripping with sweat,
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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 First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied, still have the
old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point,
the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration
will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either.
If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the
right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason
for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity,
and a firm reliance on him who has never yet forsaken this favored land,
are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.
In YOUR hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in MINE,
is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail YOU.
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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 Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: To fasten him to our heart, need the nails be driven into the very
quick? Was I not mother enough before? I, who wept tears of joy over
his broken syllables and tottering steps, who spent hours together
planning how best to perform my duty, and fit myself for the sweet
post of mother? Why these horrors, these ghastly scenes, for a mother
who already idolized her child?
As I write, our little Armand is playing, shouting, laughing. What can
be the cause of this terrible disease with children? Vainly do I try
to puzzle it out, remembering that I am again with child. Is it
teething? Is it some peculiar process in the brain? Is there something
wrong with the nervous system of children who are subject to
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