| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: that slender, dark hand. He saw her in a black silk
gown which had been her best. There had been
some red about it, and a glitter of jet. He had
thought it a magnificent gown, and the woman in it
like a princess. He could see her leaning back, in
her long slim grace, in a corner of a sofa, and the
soft dark folds starry with jet sweeping over her
knees and just allowing a glimpse of one little foot.
Her feet had been charming, very small and highly
arched. Then he remembered that that evening
they had been to a concert in the town hall, and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: shop--as if she had never another customer. She had been wonderful
to him at first, with the memory of her little entresol, the image
to which, on most mornings at that time, his eyes directly opened;
but now she mainly figured for him as but part of the bristling
total--though of course always as a person to whom he should never
cease to be indebted. It would never be given to him certainly
to inspire a greater kindness. She had decked him out for others,
and he saw at this point at least nothing she would ever ask for.
She only wondered and questioned and listened, rendering him the
homage of a wistful speculation. She expressed it repeatedly;
he was already far beyond her, and she must prepare herself 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 The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: - I slowly awake to a sense of admiration, gratitude, and
almost love. A fine place, after all, for a wasted life to
doze away in - the cuckoo clock hooting of its far home
country; the croquet mallets, eloquent of English lawns; the
stages daily bringing news of - the turbulent world away
below there; and perhaps once in the summer, a salt fog
pouring overhead with its tale of the Pacific.
A STARRY DRIVE
IN our rule at Silverado, there was a melancholy interregnum.
The queen and the crown prince with one accord fell sick;
and, as I was sick to begin with, our lone position on Mount
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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 United States Declaration of Independence: their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed
to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now
the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
United States Declaration of Independence |
