| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: who's there?
[Enter some, bringing in the Clerk of Chatham.]
SMITH.
The clerk of Chatham; he can write and read and cast
accompt.
CADE.
O monstrous!
SMITH.
We took him setting of boys' copies.
CADE.
Here's a villain!
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools;
Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters;
To trembling clients be you mediators:
For me, I force not argument a straw,
Since that my case is past the help of law.
'In vain I rail at Opportunity,
At Time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful night;
In vain I cavil with mine infamy,
In vain I spurn at my confirm'd despite:
This helpless smoke of words doth me no right.
The remedy indeed to do me good
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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 Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: of the substance of the hills. Some of them, built years ago, and
long deserted, with weeds growing in the vacant round of the
interior, which is open to the sky, and grass and wild-flowers
rooting themselves into the chinks of the stones, look already
like relics of antiquity, and may yet be overspread with the
lichens of centuries to come. Others, where the limeburner still
feeds his daily and night-long fire, afford points of interest to
the wanderer among the hills, who seats himself on a log of wood
or a fragment of marble, to hold a chat with the solitary man. It
is a lonesome, and, when the character is inclined to thought,
may be an intensely thoughtful occupation; as it proved in the
The Snow Image |
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 Touchstone by Edith Wharton: "Isn't it time to dress?"
She rose with serene reluctance. "It's a pity to go in. The
garden looks so lovely."
They lingered side by side, surveying their domain. There was not
space in it, at this hour, for the shadow of the elm-tree in the
angle of the hedge; it crossed the lawn, cut the flower-border in
two, and ran up the side of the house to the nursery window. She
bent to flick a caterpillar from the honey-suckle; then, as they
turned indoors, "If we mean to go on the yacht next Sunday," she
suggested, "oughtn't you to let Mr. Flamel know?"
Glennard's exasperation deflected suddenly. "Of course I shall
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