| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: the door.
At sight of her fine features, her dainty lace cap and mitts, and
the stiffness of her rustling black silks, Newmark took off his gray
felt hat.
"Good-afternoon," said he. "Will you kindly tell me where Mr. Orde
lives?"
"This is Mr. Orde's," replied the little old lady.
"Pardon me," persisted Newmark, "I am looking for Mr. Jack Orde, and
I was directed here. I am sorry to have troubled you."
"Mr. Jack Orde lives here," returned Grandma Orde. "He is my son.
Would you like to see him?"
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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 Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: information that General Browne had been walking abroad since an
early hour of the morning, in defiance of the weather, which was
misty and ungenial.
"The custom of a soldier," said the young nobleman to his
friends. "Many of them acquire habitual vigilance, and cannot
sleep after the early hour at which their duty usually commands
them to be alert."
Yet the explanation which Lord Woodville thus offered to the
company seemed hardly satisfactory to his own mind, and it was in
a fit of silence and abstraction that he waited the return of the
General. It took place near an hour after the breakfast bell had
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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 Apology by Xenophon: injustice to men; and on the other, that escape from death was not a
thing, in his opinion, to be clamoured for importunately--on the
contrary, he believed that the time was already come for him to die.
That such was the conclusion to which he had come was made still more
evident later when the case had been decided against him. In the first
place, when called upon to suggest a counter-penalty,[42] he would
neither do so himself nor suffer his friends to do so for him, but
went so far as to say that to propose a counter-penalty was like a
confession of guilt. And afterwards, when his companions wished to
steal him out of prison,[43] he would not follow their lead, but would
seem to have treated the idea as a jest, by asking "whether they
The Apology |
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 Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: the first,' meaning that was the servant who brought the first dish.
The servant, however, thought he intended by that to say: 'That is the
first thief,' and as he actually was so, he was terrified, and said to
his comrade outside: 'The doctor knows all: we shall fare ill, he said
I was the first.' The second did not want to go in at all, but was
forced. So when he went in with his dish, the peasant nudged his wife,
and said: 'Grete, that is the second.' This servant was equally
alarmed, and he got out as fast as he could. The third fared no
better, for the peasant again said: 'Grete, that is the third.' The
fourth had to carry in a dish that was covered, and the lord told the
doctor that he was to show his skill, and guess what was beneath the
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
