| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: sportsman rejoiced in a pair of patient listeners. Suddenly the
glass door flew open with a crash; the Marechal-des-logis appeared
in the interval, gorgeously belted and befrogged, entered without
salutation, strode up the room with a clang of spurs and weapons,
and disappeared through a door at the far end. Close at his heels
followed the Arethusa's gendarme of the afternoon, imitating, with
a nice shade of difference, the imperial bearing of his chief;
only, as he passed, he struck lightly with his open hand on the
shoulder of his late captive, and with that ringing, dramatic
utterance of which he had the secret - "SUIVEZ!" said he.
The arrest of the members, the oath of the Tennis Court, the
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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 Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: With a heavier load than he.
What I feel within my breast
That in truth's the thing for me!
1789.
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DIFFERENT EMOTIONS ON THE SAME SPOT.
THE MAIDEN.
I'VE seen him before me!
What rapture steals o'er me!
Oh heavenly sight!
He's coming to meet me;
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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 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: of the Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve
in?" she asked Natasha. "Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!" she
ordered the butler who was handing things round. "That's not forbidden
by his law."
Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by
the dancers, who- having decided once for all that being disguised, no
one would recognize them- were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna
hid her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook
with irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.
"My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!" she said.
After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelageya Danilovna
War and Peace |
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 Human Drift by Jack London: And immediately her population sprang up.
According to the census of Ireland, of 1659, that country had a
population of 500,000. One hundred and fifty years later, her
population was 8,000,000. For many centuries the population of
Japan was stationary. There seemed no way of increasing her food-
getting efficiency. Then, sixty years ago, came Commodore Perry,
knocking down her doors and letting in the knowledge and machinery
of the superior food-getting efficiency of the Western world.
Immediately upon this rise in subsistence began the rise of
population; and it is only the other day that Japan, finding her
population once again pressing against subsistence, embarked,
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