| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: effort, into which they throw the life of many days and then are
lifeless for as many more.
Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary
influence come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not,
unless that he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly
beyond her reach. One glance of recognition she had imagined
must needs pass between them. She thought of the dim forest,
with its little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the
mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand-in-hand, they had mingled
their sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur of the
The Scarlet Letter |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: from his position, and despairs of his country, when his
country has more reasons to despair of him. He forthwith
adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only
available one, thus proving that he is himself available for
any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth
than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native,
who may have been bought. O for a man who is a man, and,
and my neighbor says, has a bone is his back which you
cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault:
the population has been returned too large. How many men
are there to a square thousand miles in the country?
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: A woman's voice answered to the name from the interior of the house. A
moment later Jacquotte, assuming the offensive, called in her turn to
Benassis, who forthwith went into the dining-room.
"Just like you, sir!" she exclaimed; "you never do like anybody else.
You always ask people to dinner without telling me beforehand, and you
think that everything is settled as soon as you have called for
Jacquotte! You are not going to have the gentleman sit in the kitchen,
are you? Is not the salon to be unlocked and a fire to be lighted?
Nicolle is there, and will see after everything. Now take the
gentleman into the garden for a minute; that will amuse him; if he
likes to look at pretty things, show him the arbor of hornbeam trees
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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 The Contrast by Royall Tyler: enough there, Got knows, mine friend."
JENNY
Well--
JONATHAN
So I went right in, and they shewed me away, clean
up to the garret, just like meeting-house gallery.
And so I saw a bower of topping folks, all sitting
round in little cabbins, "just like father's corn-cribs";
and then there was such a squeaking with the fiddles,
and such a tarnal blaze with the lights, my head was
near turned. At last the people that sat near me set
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