| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: dark face, delicate mouth and sensitive, loose lips, in corduroys
and laced boots, smoking cigarettes--an interesting figure,
suggestive of a mixed origin, morbid, excitable, melancholy,
brooding upon things that had no names. Then it was Bonneville,
with the gayety and confusion of Main Street, the whirring
electric cars, the zinc-sheathed telegraph poles, the buckboards
with squashes stowed under the seats; Ruggles in frock coat,
Stetson hat and shoe-string necktie, writing abstractedly upon
his blotting pad; Dyke, the engineer, big-boned. Powerful, deep-
voiced, good-natured, with his fine blonde beard and massive
arms, rehearsing the praises of his little daughter Sidney,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: clean, that his were the scoured fingers of the surgeon, made
his stubborn untidiness the more jarring. They were wise
hands, kind hands, but they were not the hands of love.
She remembered him in the days of courtship. He had tried
to please her, then, had touched her by sheepishly wearing
a colored band on his straw hat. Was it possible that those
days of fumbling for each other were gone so completely?
He had read books, to impress her; had said (she recalled it
ironically) that she was to point out his every fault; had
insisted once, as they sat in the secret place beneath the walls
of Fort Snelling----
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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 American by Henry James: and Northern Italy, planning about nothing, but seeing everything.
The guides and valets de place found him an excellent subject.
He was always approachable, for he was much addicted to standing
about in the vestibules and porticos of inns, and he availed himself
little of the opportunities for impressive seclusion which are so
liberally offered in Europe to gentlemen who travel with long purses.
When an excursion, a church, a gallery, a ruin, was proposed
to him, the first thing Newman usually did, after surveying
his postulant in silence, from head to foot, was to sit down
at a little table and order something to drink. The cicerone,
during this process, usually retreated to a respectful distance;
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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 An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: a cloak of black satin, lined with dead rose-leaf silk.]
HAROLD. What name, madam?
MRS. CHEVELEY. [To PHIPPS, who advances towards her.] Is Lord
Goring not here? I was told he was at home?
PHIPPS. His lordship is engaged at present with Lord Caversham,
madam.
[Turns a cold, glassy eye on HAROLD, who at once retires.]
MRS. CHEVELEY. [To herself.] How very filial!
PHIPPS. His lordship told me to ask you, madam, to be kind enough to
wait in the drawing-room for him. His lordship will come to you
there.
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