| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: reluctant gait.
Crossing the stream, Daylight followed a faint cattle trail over
a low, rocky hill and through a wine-wooded forest of manzanita,
and emerged upon another tiny valley, down which filtered another
spring-fed, meadow-bordered streamlet. A jack-rabbit bounded
from a bush under his horse's nose, leaped the stream, and
vanished up the opposite hillside of scrub-oak. Daylight watched
it admiringly as he rode on to the head of the meadow. Here he
startled up a many-pronged buck, that seemed to soar across the
meadow, and to soar over the stake-and-rider fence, and, still
soaring, disappeared in a friendly copse beyond.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: distress? If she in the least suspects that I am going off, I shall
certainly be locked up, or sent to my aunt Pedigree's, which is ten
times worse.
TONY. To be sure, aunts of all kinds are damned bad things. But what
can I do? I have got you a pair of horses that will fly like
Whistle-jacket; and I'm sure you can't say but I have courted you
nicely before her face. Here she comes, we must court a bit or two
more, for fear she should suspect us. [They retire, and seem to
fondle.]
Enter MRS. HARDCASTLE.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. Well, I was greatly fluttered, to be sure. But my
She Stoops to Conquer |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: I will still make use and get what advantages of her I can,
as is usual in such cases.
If others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a
sympathy with the State, they do but what they have already
done in their own case, or rather they abet injustice to a
greater extent than the State requires. If they pay the tax
from a mistaken interest in the individual taxed, to save
his property, or prevent his going to jail, it is because
they have not considered wisely how far they let their
private feelings interfere with the public good.
This, then is my position at present. But one cannot be too
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
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 Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: the Hotel-Dieu, the pupil saw nothing very strange in that.
One day, as he crossed the Place Saint-Sulpice, Bianchon caught
sight of his master going into the church at about nine in the
morning. Desplein, who at that time never went a step without his
cab, was on foot, and slipped in by the door in the Rue du Petit-
Lion, as if he were stealing into some house of ill fame. The
house surgeon, naturally possessed by curiosity, knowing his
master's opinions, and being himself a rabid follower of Cabanis
(Cabaniste en dyable, with the y, which in Rabelais seems to
convey an intensity of devilry)--Bianchon stole into the church,
and was not a little astonished to see the great Desplein, the
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