| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: have a sort of roof, too, and seem to expect to be out in all
weathers."
"If you had a family of children, perhaps you would find such a
travelling caravan very convenient," said Kate.
"If I had such a family," said her aunt, "I would have a
separate governess and guardian for each, very moral persons.
They should come when each child was two, and stay till it was
twenty. The children should all live apart, in order not to
quarrel, and should meet once or twice a day and bow to each
other. I think that each should learn a different language, so
as not to converse, and then, perhaps, they would not get each
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: part of Cyrus, Hieramenes[6] and his wife urged upon Dariaeus the
danger of overlooking such excessive insolence on the part of the
young prince, and Dariaeus, on the plea of sickness, sent a special
embassy to summon Cyrus to his bedside.
[3] B.C. 406.
[4] Dariaeus, i.e. Darius, but the spelling of the name is correct,
and occurs in Ctesias, though in the "Anabasis" we have the
spelling Darius.
[5] These words look like the note of a foolish and ignorant scribe.
He ought to have written, "The daughter of Artaxerxes and own
sister of Darius, commonly so called."
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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 Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: me, Mademoiselle de Cocheforet glided forward towards me. She
had a hood on her head, drawn low; and for a moment I could not
see her face, I forgot her brother's presence at my elbow, I
forgot other things, and, from habit and impulse rather than
calculation, I took a step forward to meet her; though my tongue
cleaved to the roof of my mouth, and I was dumb and trembling.
But she recoiled with such a look of white hate, of staring,
frozen-eyed abhorrence, that I stepped back as if she had indeed
struck me. It did not need the words which accompanied the look
--the 'DO NOT TOUCH ME!' which she hissed at me as she drew her
skirts together--to drive me to the farther edge of the hollow;
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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 Lesson of the Master by Henry James: a considerable part of his short life in foreign lands, made now,
but not for the first time, the reflexion that whereas in those
countries he had almost always recognised the artist and the man of
letters by his personal "type," the mould of his face, the
character of his head, the expression of his figure and even the
indications of his dress, so in England this identification was as
little as possible a matter of course, thanks to the greater
conformity, the habit of sinking the profession instead of
advertising it, the general diffusion of the air of the gentleman -
the gentleman committed to no particular set of ideas. More than
once, on returning to his own country, he had said to himself about
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