| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: When he most burned in heart-wish'd luxury,
He preach'd pure maid and prais'd cold chastity.
'Thus merely with the garment of a Grace
The naked and concealed fiend he cover'd,
That the unexperienc'd gave the tempter place,
Which, like a cherubin, above them hover'd.
Who, young and simple, would not be so lover'd?
Ay me! I fell, and yet do question make
What I should do again for such a sake.
'O, that infected moisture of his eye,
O, that false fire which in his cheek so glow'd,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: eccentric, a person of no spirit.
Which of them said which has never been determined, and does not matter, since
they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderous
and brassy assurance. If it was not Babbitt who was delivering any given
verdict, at least he was beaming on the chancellor who did deliver it.
"At that, though," announced the first "they're selling quite some booze in
Zenith. Guess they are everywhere. I don't know how you fellows feel about
prohibition, but the way it strikes me is that it's a mighty beneficial thing
for the poor zob that hasn't got any will-power but for fellows like us, it's
an infringement of personal liberty."
"That's a fact. Congress has got no right to interfere with a fellow's
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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 Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: between him and Mr. Ward, formerly Minister to Mexico before Mr.
Pakenham. He wrote a very nice book on Mexico, and is an agreeable
and intelligent person. . . . On Wednesday A. and I went together to
the National Gallery, and just as we were setting out Mr. Butler of
New York came in and I invited him to join us. . . . While we were
seated before a charming Claude who should come in but Mr. R.W.
Emerson and we had quite a joyful greeting. Just then came in Mr.
Rogers with two ladies, one on each arm. He renewed his request
that I would bring my son to breakfast with him, and appointed
Friday morning, and then added if those gentlemen who are with you
are your friends and countrymen, perhaps they will accompany 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 The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: them all rises to desolating tragedy. I remember now the wan spring
sunshine of that Sunday morning, the stiff feeling of best clothes
and aggressive cleanliness and formality, when I and my mother
returned from church to find my father dead. He had been pruning
the grape vine. He had never had a ladder long enough to reach the
sill of the third-floor windows--at house-painting times he had
borrowed one from the plumber who mixed his paint--and he had in his
own happy-go-lucky way contrived a combination of the garden fruit
ladder with a battered kitchen table that served all sorts of odd
purposes in an outhouse. He had stayed up this arrangement by means
of the garden roller, and the roller had at the critical moment--
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