| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: front sled. Here was the cruellest work, and they respected him,
though on the side they rapped their foreheads with their knuckles
and significantly shook their heads. One night they tried to run
away, but the zip-zip of his bullets in the snow brought them back,
snarling but convinced. Whereupon, being only savage Chilkat men,
they put their heads together to kill him; but he slept like a cat,
and, waking or sleeping, the chance never came. Often they tried
to tell him the import of the smoke wreath in the rear, but he
could not comprehend and grew suspicious of them. And when they
sulked or shirked, he was quick to let drive at them between the
eyes, and quick to cool their heated souls with sight of his ready
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: love, most people would die unwed; and among the others, there
would be not a few tumultuous households. The Lion is the
King of Beasts, but he is scarcely suitable for a domestic
pet. In the same way, I suspect love is rather too violent a
passion to make, in all cases, a good domestic sentiment.
Like other violent excitements, it throws up not only what is
best, but what is worst and smallest, in men's characters.
Just as some people are malicious in drink, or brawling and
virulent under the influence of religious feeling, some are
moody, jealous, and exacting when they are in love, who are
honest, downright, good-hearted fellows enough in the everyday
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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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: costumes and with Roman phrases the task of their time: the emancipation
and the establishment of modern bourgeois society. One set knocked to
pieces the old feudal groundwork and mowed down the feudal heads that
had grown upon it; Napoleon brought about, within France, the conditions
under which alone free competition could develop, the partitioned lands
be exploited the nation's unshackled powers of industrial production be
utilized; while, beyond the French frontier, he swept away everywhere
the establishments of feudality, so far as requisite, to furnish the
bourgeois social system of France with fit surroundings of the European
continent, and such as were in keeping with the times. Once the new
social establishment was set on foot, the antediluvian giants vanished,
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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 Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: awaited the moment for executing my purpose. The porter arrived
at his usual time, that is to say, soon after nine o'clock. I
allowed an hour to elapse, in order that the priests as well as
the servants might be all asleep. I at length proceeded with my
pistol and a lighted candle. I first gave a gentle tap at the
governor's door to awaken without alarming him. I knocked a
second time before he heard me; and supposing of course that it
was one of the priests who was taken ill and wanted assistance,
he got out of bed, dressed himself, and came to the door. He
had, however, the precaution to ask first who it was, and what
was wanted? I was obliged to mention my name, but I assumed a
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