| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: experienced: here is a convenient beach, deep soil, good water,
and yet nowhere any paepaes, nowhere any trace of island
habitation.
It is but a few years since this valley was a place choked with
jungle, the debatable land and battle-ground of cannibals. Two
clans laid claim to it - neither could substantiate the claim, and
the roads lay desert, or were only visited by men in arms. It is
for this very reason that it wears now so smiling an appearance:
cleared, planted, built upon, supplied with railways, boat-houses,
and bath-houses. For, being no man's land, it was the more readily
ceded to a stranger. The stranger was Captain John Hart: Ima
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: social relationships at my uncle's house that Marion did not
share. The seeds of new ideas poured in upon me and grew in me.
Those early and middle years of one's third decade are, I
suppose, for a man the years of greatest mental growth. They are
restless years and full of vague enterprise.
Each time I returned to Ealing, life there seemed more alien,
narrow, and unattractive--and Marion less beautiful and more
limited and difficult--until at last she was robbed of every
particle of her magic. She gave me always a cooler welcome, I
think, until she seemed entirely apathetic. I never asked myself
then what heartaches she might hide or what her discontents might
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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 Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: The day he played baseball.
About Boys
Show me the boy who never threw
A stone at someone's cat;
Or never hurled a snowball swift
At someone's high silk hat.
Who never ran away from school,
To seek the swimming hole;
Or slyly from a neighbor's yard
Green apples never stole.
Show me the boy who never broke
Just Folks |
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 Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War by Frederick A. Talbot: select the elevation from which to hurl their missiles of
destruction.
There is another and even more important factor in their favour.
A projectile fired, or even dropped, from a height, say of 5,000
feet, is favourably affected by the force of gravity, with the
result that it travels towards the earth with accumulating energy
and strikes the ground with decisive force.
On the other hand, a missile discharged into space from a weapon
on the earth has to combat this action of gravity, which
exercises a powerful nullifying influence upon its flight and
velocity, far in excess of the mere resistance offered by the
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