| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: strong, and the blood all hot and good about me, and I loved
to run, too - deary me, to run! Well, that's all by. You'd
better pray to be took early, Nance, and not live on till you
get to be like me, and are robbed in your grey old age, your
cold, shivering, dark old age, that's like a winter's
morning'; and he bitterly shuddered, spreading his hands
before the fire.
'Come now,' said Nance, 'the more you say the less you'll
like it, Uncle Jonathan; but if I were you I would be proud
for to have lived all your days honest and beloved, and come
near the end with your good name: isn't that a fine thing to
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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 Odyssey by Homer: wicked suitors. Everything, therefore, seemed quite different to
him--the long straight tracks, the harbours, the precipices, and
the goodly trees, appeared all changed as he started up and
looked upon his native land. So he smote his thighs with the
flat of his hands and cried aloud despairingly.
"Alas," he exclaimed, "among what manner of people am I fallen?
Are they savage and uncivilised or hospitable and humane? Where
shall I put all this treasure, and which way shall I go? I wish
I had staid over there with the Phaeacians; or I could have gone
to some other great chief who would have been good to me and
given me an escort. As it is I do not know where to put my
The Odyssey |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: They crawled up dark stairways and along cold, gloomy halls.
At last the father pushed open a door and they entered a lighted room
in which a large woman was rampant.
She stopped in a career from a seething stove to a pan-covered table.
As the father and children filed in she peered at them.
"Eh, what? Been fightin' agin, by Gawd!" She threw herself
upon Jimmie. The urchin tried to dart behind the others and in the
scuffle the babe, Tommie, was knocked down. He protested with his
usual vehemence, because they had bruised his tender shins against
a table leg.
The mother's massive shoulders heaved with anger. Grasping the
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
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 Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: following objects, namely, viz., and to wit: the bottle cap, the
chicken brains, the horse manure, a piece of grimy string, a cigar
butt, three pieces of chewed and flattened gum, a wing nut with
stripped threads, a rusty nail (bent in two places), part of a candy
wrapper, some rat pills (eleven of them), half a marble, and a
common pebble.
After a moment or two of reflective silence, the mayor made bold to
speak (seeing the constable in a reverie), and asked gently and
softly, "Where did you get all these, uh, items?"
"Why, looking for gold and treasure, sonny," the old man answered,
in a tone that implied that the mayor should have known the answer
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