| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: Arriv'd at Cumae, when you view the flood
Of black Avernus, and the sounding wood,
The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find,
Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd.
She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits,
The notes and names, inscrib'd, to leafs commits.
What she commits to leafs, in order laid,
Before the cavern's entrance are display'd:
Unmov'd they lie; but, if a blast of wind
Without, or vapors issue from behind,
The leafs are borne aloft in liquid air,
Aeneid |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: capital had been increased; that the farmlands, the houses, or the
investments were extended, or repaired, or doubled. Whence it became
necessary to begin again with increased ardor, to accumulate more
crown-pieces, without its ever entering the brain of these laborious
ants to ask--"To what end?"
Favored by this annual turmoil, the happy Augustine escaped the
investigations of her Argus-eyed relations. At last, one Saturday
evening, the stock-taking was finished. The figures of the sum-total
showed a row of 0's long enough to allow Guillaume for once to relax
the stern rule as to dessert which reigned throughout the year. The
shrewd old draper rubbed his hands, and allowed his assistants to
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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 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: and all about were the evidences of a terrific fight.
There was a rude board coffin on a cart at the door,
and workmen, assisted by the police, were thinning a
road through the gaping crowd in order that they
might bring it in.
I picked out a man humble enough in life to conde-
scend to talk with one so shabby as I, and got his ac-
count of the matter.
"There were sixteen slaves here. They rose against
their master in the night, and thou seest how it ended."
"Yes. How did it begin?"
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
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 War in the Air by H. G. Wells: along and look at this person more closely and examine the helmet
he carried under his arm. But he forgot about the helmet when he
got to the recess, because there he found lying on the floor the
dead body of the boy who had been killed by a bullet from the
Theodore Roosevelt.
Bert had not observed that any bullets at all had reached the
Vaterland or, indeed, imagined himself under fire. He could not
understand for a time what had killed the lad, and no one
explained to him.
The boy lay just as he had fallen and died, with his jacket torn
and scorched, his shoulder-blade smashed and burst away from his
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