| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: breathe or speak, what comes out of your mouth is carbonic acid;
and that, if your breath comes on a bit of slacked lime, it will
begin to turn it back into the chalk from which it was made; and
that, if your breath comes on the leaves of a growing plant, that
leaf will take the carbon out of it, and turn it into wood. And
surely that is worth knowing,--that you may be helping to make
chalk, or to make wood, every time you breathe.
Well; that is very curious.
But now, ask him, What is carbon? And he will tell you, that many
things are carbon. A diamond is carbon; and so is blacklead; and
so is charcoal and coke, and coal in part, and wood in part.
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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 Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: ears sticking up through the lawn
mowings. He stared at them for
some time.
Presently a fly settled on one of
them and it moved.
Mr. McGregor climbed down on
to the rubbish heap--
"One, two, three, four! five! six
leetle rabbits!" said he as he
dropped them into his sack. The
Flopsy Bunnies dreamt that their
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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 King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: snowless elevations, was now nearly in shadow--all but the uppermost
jets of spray, which rose like slow smoke above the undulating line
of the cataract and floated away in feeble wreaths upon the morning
wind.
On this object, and on this alone, Hans's eyes and thoughts
were fixed. Forgetting the distance he had to traverse, he set off
at an imprudent rate of walking, which greatly exhausted him before
he had scaled the first range of the green and low hills. He was,
moreover, surprised, on surmounting them, to find that a large
glacier, of whose existence, notwithstanding his previous knowledge
of the mountains, he had been absolutely ignorant, lay between him
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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 Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: his hair. She was very fond of him, and she meant to be a good
wife. If she ever thought of Dick Livingstone now it was in
connection with her own reckless confession to Elizabeth. She
had hated Elizabeth ever since.
"I'll take a hypothetical case. If you guess, you needn't say.
Of course it's a great secret."
She listened, nodding now and then. He used no names, and he said
nothing of any crime.
"The point is this," he finished. "Is it better to believe the
man is dead, or to know that he is alive, but has cut himself off?"
"There's no mistake about the recognition?"
The Breaking Point |
