| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: It seems, in thy restraint: What could I more
I warned thee, I admonished thee, foretold
The danger, and the lurking enemy
That lay in wait; beyond this, had been force;
And force upon free will hath here no place.
But confidence then bore thee on; secure
Either to meet no danger, or to find
Matter of glorious trial; and perhaps
I also erred, in overmuch admiring
What seemed in thee so perfect, that I thought
No evil durst attempt thee; but I rue
Paradise Lost |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: have never so much as endeavoured to inform yourself; for, brief as
your letter is, you have found the means to stumble into that
confession. "LESS THAN ONE-HALF of the island," you say, "is
devoted to the lepers." Molokai - "MOLOKAI AHINA," the "grey,"
lofty, and most desolate island - along all its northern side
plunges a front of precipice into a sea of unusual profundity.
This range of cliff is, from east to west, the true end and
frontier of the island. Only in one spot there projects into the
ocean a certain triangular and rugged down, grassy, stony, windy,
and rising in the midst into a hill with a dead crater: the whole
bearing to the cliff that overhangs it somewhat the same relation
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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 Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: was the last straw. I put a pillow over my head so nobody could
hear me, and then and there I had hysterics. I knew I was having
them, and I wasn't ashamed. I'd have exploded if I hadn't.
And then somebody jerked the pillow away and I looked up,
with my eyes swollen almost shut, and it was Doctor Barnes. He
had a glass of water in his hand and he held it right above me.
"One more yell," he said, "and it goes over you!"
I lay there staring up at him, and then I knew what a fright I
looked, and although I couldn't speak yet, I reached up and felt
for my hairpins.
"That's better," he said, putting down the glass. "Another ten
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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 Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: men do in their political lives. We have only beheld some
Principle riding aloft, not the mud through which her chariot
wheels are dragged. The ways must be swept before we can walk in
them--but how and by whom shall this be done?"
For my part, _I_ can't say, and I wish somebody would tell me.
Well--after seeing our State, which we used to be proud of,
delivered over for two years to the control of a party whose
policy was so repugnant to all our feelings of loyalty, we
endeavored to procure, at least a qualification of intelligence for
voters. Of course, we didn't get it: the exclusion from suffrage
of all who were unable to read and write might have turned the
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