| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: it; and the horses and mules and cattle and dogs - hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds, and not an animal that you can't do what you
please with, except uncle Thomas, but I don't mind him, he's
lovely; and oh, if you could hear the bugles: TOO - TOO - TOO-TOO
- TOO - TOO, and so on - perfectly beautiful! Do you recognize
that one? It's the first toots of the REVEILLE; it goes, dear me,
SO early in the morning! - then I and every other soldier on the
whole place are up and out in a minute, except uncle Thomas, who is
most unaccountably lazy, I don't know why, but I have talked to him
about it, and I reckon it will be better, now. He hasn't any
faults much, and is charming and sweet, like Buffalo Bill, 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 The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: wife to ply? And, be she Countess or Baroness, the lady will not be
able to get us out of the trap in which we shall find ourselves caught
sooner or later. Shall we not have to square accounts with some
puissant and offended husband? for, by the Mass, she is fair to look
upon!"
"But she is a widow, I tell you, gray gander! How dare you accuse your
wife of foul play and folly? And the lady has never spoken a word to
yon gentle clerk, she is content to look on him and think of him. Poor
lad! he would be dead of starvation by now but for her, for she is as
good as a mother to him. And he, the sweet cherub! it is as easy to
cheat him as to rock a new-born babe. He believes his pence will last
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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 Mountains by Stewart Edward White: us. But that noon while we ate, the horses ran down
toward us, and wheeled, as though in cavalry formation,
looking toward the hill and snorting. So I put
down my tin plate gently, and took up my rifle, and
without rising shot that bear through the back of the
neck. We took his skin, and also his hind quarters,
and went on.
By the third day from Granite Basin we reached
the end of the long narrow canon with the high cliffs
and the dark pine-trees and the very blue sky.
Therefore we turned sharp to the left and climbed
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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 An International Episode by Henry James: "Well, then," observed his companion, "if you go, you go
with your eyes open."
"Damn my eyes!" exclaimed Lord Lambeth. "If one is to be a dozen times
a day at the house, it is a great deal more convenient to sleep there.
I am sick of traveling up and down this beastly avenue."
Since he had determined to go, Percy Beaumont would, of course,
have been very sorry to allow him to go alone; he was a man
of conscience, and he remembered his promise to the duchess.
It was obviously the memory of this promise that made him say
to his companion a couple of days later that he rather wondered
he should be so fond of that girl.
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