| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: as well as he.
"No, never again," he said, trying to be cheerful.
She stood just a moment, looking at him. Do you laugh at her,
standing there, with her hunchback, her rags, her bleared,
withered face, and the great despised love tugging at her heart?
"Come, you!" called Haley, impatiently.
She did not move.
"Hugh!" she whispered.
It was to be her last word. What was it?
"Hugh, boy, not THAT!"
He did not answer. She wrung her hands, trying to be silent,
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: SALISBURY.
To Callice, where my liege, king Edward, is.
KING JOHN.
To Callice, Salisbury? Then, to Callice pack,
And bid the king prepare a noble grave,
To put his princely son, black Edward, in.
And as thou travelst westward from this place,
Some two leagues hence there is a lofty hill,
Whose top seems topless, for the embracing sky
Doth hide his high head in her azure bosom;
Upon whose tall top when thy foot attains,
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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 Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: his head, an' a cripple an' all that, God forgive me, I was afraid
to tell, and I kept still and let it go at that; an' whin they
asked me how he was I'd say he was better, or more comfortable, or
easier; an' so he was, thank God! bein' in heaven."
She roused herself wearily, and wiped her eyes with the back of
her hand. Babcock sat motionless.
"Since that I've kep' the promise to me Tom that I made on me
knees beside his bed the night I lifted him in me arms to take him
downstairs--that I 'd keep his name clean, and do by it as he
would hev done himself, an' bring up the children, an' hold the
roof over their heads. An' now they say I dar'n't be called by
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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 Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: the length of the Cordilleras of the Andes to this day.
He told of his reason for venturing back from that fastness,
into which he had first been carried lashed to a llama, beside a
vast bale of gear, when he was a child. The valley, he said, had
in it all that the heart of man could desire--sweet water, pasture,
an even climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub
that bore an excellent fruit, and on one side great hanging forests
of pine that held the avalanches high. Far overhead, on three
sides, vast cliffs of grey-green rock were capped by cliffs of ice;
but the glacier stream came not to them, but flowed away by the
farther slopes, and only now and then huge ice masses fell on the
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