| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: He hesitated and then with a certain emotion forced himself to do
this. He went towards the bushes and cut himself a wand and
returned to the rocks and clambered out to a corner between the
eddy and the stream, By that time the sunset was over and the
bats were abroad--and he was wet with perspiration.
He prodded the floating blue-clad thing with his wand, failed,
tried again successfully as it came round, and as it went out
into the stream it turned over, the light gleamed on golden hair
and--it was Kurt!
It was Kurt, white and dead and very calm. There was no
mistaking him. There was still plenty of light for that. The
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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 Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: cousin an affirmative answer that sent a shudder through her.
She grasped his hand tightly in hers, suffered him to kiss her on
either cheek, and begged him to go at once. He must not watch
her movements nor try to protect her. "But the people passing
in the street," he objected.
"No one can fail in respect to me," she said. It was the last
word spoken by the Duchess and the woman of fashion.
The Vidame went. Mme de Langeais wrapped herself about in her
cloak, and stood on the doorstep until the clocks struck eight.
The last stroke died away. The unhappy woman waited ten, fifteen
minutes; to the last she tried to see a fresh humiliation in the
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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 Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: the young aristocrat. "Stepping-stones lie low, as my reverend
friend suggests; impudence ascends; merit and refinement scorn
such dirty paths,"--with a mournful remembrance of the last dime
in his waistcoat-pocket.
"But do you," exclaimed the farmer, with sudden solemnity, "do
you understand this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is
in this mill, and every dollar of it is going into some castle in
the air that no sane man can comprehend."
"Mad as a March hare," contemptuously muttered the doctor.
His reverend friend gave him a look,--after which he was silent.
"I wish to the Lord some one would persuade him out of it,"
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
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 In the Cage by Henry James: amounted nevertheless to genius, and there were those she liked and
those she hated, her feeling for the latter of which grew to a
positive possession, an instinct of observation and detection.
There were the brazen women, as she called them, of the higher and
the lower fashion, whose squanderings and graspings, whose
struggles and secrets and love-affairs and lies, she tracked and
stored up against them till she had at moments, in private, a
triumphant vicious feeling of mastery and ease, a sense of carrying
their silly guilty secrets in her pocket, her small retentive
brain, and thereby knowing so much more about them than they
suspected or would care to think. There were those she would have
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