| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling: on being Gods, and having temples, and altars, and
priests, and sacrifices of their own.'
'People burned in wicker baskets?' said Dan. 'Like
Miss Blake tells us about?'
'All sorts of sacrifices,' said Puck. 'If it wasn't men, it
was horses, or cattle, or pigs, or metheglin - that's a
sticky, sweet sort of beer. I never liked it. They were a
stiff-necked, extravagant set of idols, the Old Things. But
what was the result? Men don't like being sacrificed at the
best of times; they don't even like sacrificing their farm-
horses. After a while, men simply left the Old Things
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: done service upon it, during the six weeks of its successful
working between Valencia and Newfoundland. As soon as he had seen
something of what I had in hand, he said to me, 'I would like to
show this to a young man of remarkable ability, at present engaged
in our works at Birkenhead.' Fleeming Jenkin was accordingly
telegraphed for, and appeared next morning in Glasgow. He remained
for a week, spending the whole day in my class-room and laboratory,
and thus pleasantly began our lifelong acquaintance. I was much
struck, not only with his brightness and ability, but with his
resolution to understand everything spoken of, to see if possible
thoroughly through every difficult question, and (no if about
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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 Touchstone by Edith Wharton: now. It was as though he had married her instead of the other.
It was what she had always wanted--to be with him--and she had
gained her point at last. . . .
He sprang up, as though in an impulse of flight. . . . The sudden
movement lifted his wife's lids, and she asked, in the incurious
voice of the woman whose life is enclosed in a magic circle of
prosperity--"Any news?"
"No--none--" he said, roused to a sense of immediate peril. The
papers lay scattered at his feet--what if she were to see them?
He stretched his arm to gather them up, but his next thought
showed him the futility of such concealment. The same
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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 Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: canoes.
"You grazed that villain rock at the corner," said Jean; "didn't
you know where it was?"
"Yes, after I touched it," cried Ferdinand; "but you took in a
bucket of water, and I suppose your m'sieu' is sitting on a piece
of the river. Is it not?"
This seemed to us all a very merry jest, and we laughed with the
same inextinguishable laughter which a practical joke, according to
Homer, always used to raise in Olympus. It is one of the charms of
life in the woods that it brings back the high spirits of boyhood
and renews the youth of the world. Plain fun, like plain food,
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