| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: open till 12; and there was a road to Fort Genois, only a bridge
had been carried away, &c. At last I got off, and we rowed round
to Fort Genois, where my men had put up a capital gipsy tent with
sails, and there was my big board and Thomson's number 5 in great
glory. I soon came to the conclusion there was a break. Two of my
faithful Cagliaritans slept all night in the little tent, to guard
it and my precious instruments; and the sea, which was rather
rough, silenced my Frenchmen.
'Next day I went on with my experiments, whilst a boat grappled for
the cable a little way from shore and buoyed it where the ELBA
could get hold. I brought all back to the ELBA, tried my machinery
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: comer, and you have power upon the hour. Come with me to my stone
house."
So they went by the sea margin, and the man piped the song of the
morrow, and the leaves followed behind them as they went.
Then they sat down together; and the sea beat on the terrace, and
the gulls cried about the towers, and the wind crooned in the
chimneys of the house. Nine years they sat, and every year when it
fell autumn, the man said, "This is the hour, and I have power in
it"; and the daughter of the King said, "Nay, but pipe me the song
of the morrow". And he piped it, and it was long like years.
Now when the nine years were gone, the King's daughter of Duntrine
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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 Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: himself, as if the guard of the prisoner he felt himself to
be were trying to soften his captivity; and the perception
increased his passionate determination to be free.
In the drawing-room, where they presently joined the
ladies, he met May's triumphant eyes, and read in them
the conviction that everything had "gone off" beautifully.
She rose from Madame Olenska's side, and immediately
Mrs. van der Luyden beckoned the latter to a
seat on the gilt sofa where she throned. Mrs. Selfridge
Merry bore across the room to join them, and it became
clear to Archer that here also a conspiracy of
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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 God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: the sonship of Christ or to the method of his birth. The new
opinion arouses the hostility and alarm of minds unaccustomed to so
definite a statement, and in the zeal of their recoil they fly to a
contrary proposition. The Christians would neither admit that they
worshipped more gods than one because of the Greeks, nor deny the
divinity of Christ because of the Jews. They dreaded to be
polytheistic; equally did they dread the least apparent detraction
from the power and importance of their Saviour. They were forced
into the theory of the Trinity by the necessity of those contrary
assertions, and they had to make it a mystery protected by curses to
save it from a reductio ad absurdam. The entire history of the
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