| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: know how it was, but I thought of all the ghost stories I had ever
heard, even those that I had heard when I was a boy at school, and
had forgotten long ago; and they didn't come into my mind one after
another, but all crowding at once, like. I recollected one story
there was in the village, how that on a certain night in the year
(it might be that very night for anything I knew), all the dead
people came out of the ground and sat at the heads of their own
graves till morning. This made me think how many people I had
known, were buried between the church-door and the churchyard gate,
and what a dreadful thing it would be to have to pass among them
and know them again, so earthy and unlike themselves. I had known
Barnaby Rudge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: trast, a redundant orator was making a speech to
another gathering not thirty steps away, in fulsome
laudation of "our glorious British liberties!"
I was boiling. I had forgotten I was a plebeian, I
was remembering I was a man. Cost what it might, I
would mount that rostrum and --
Click! the king and I were handcuffed together!
Our companions, those servants, had done it; my lord
Grip stood looking on. The king burst out in a fury,
and said:
"What meaneth this ill-mannered jest?"
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: leave his prefecture so long as his mistress lived.
Blondet felt himself unequal at his age to a contest with a young
wife. He sought consolation in his greenhouse, and engaged a very
pretty servant-maid to assist him to tend his ever-changing bevy of
beauties. So while the judge potted, pricked out, watered, layered,
slipped, blended, and induced his flowers to break, Mme. Blondet spent
his substance on the dress and finery in which she shone at the
prefecture. One interest alone had power to draw her away from the
tender care of a romantic affection which the town came to admire in
the end; and this interest was Emile's education. The child of love
was a bright and pretty boy, while Joseph was no less heavy and plain-
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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 Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: for it.
There are men like that: not many perhaps, but a few; and they are
the ones who suffer most keenly in this world of half-understanding
and clouded knowledge. There is a pride, honourable and sensitive,
that imperils the realization of love, puts it under a spell of
silence and reserve, makes it sterile of blossoms and impotent of
fruits. For what is it, after all, but a subtle, spiritual worship
of self? And what was Falconer's resolve not to tell this girl that
he loved her until he had won fame and position, but a secret,
unconscious setting of himself above her? For surely, if love is
supreme, it does not need to wait for anything else to lend it worth
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