| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: side, and the scream hurt Shackles' feelings. He couldn't stop
dead; but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty yards, and
then, very gravely and judicially, bucked off Brunt--a shaking,
terror-stricken lump, while Regula Baddun made a neck-and-neck race
with Bobolink up the straight, and won by a short head--Petard a bad
third. Shackles' owner, in the Stand, tried to think that his
field-glasses had gone wrong. Regula Baddun's owner, waiting by the
two bricks, gave one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back to the
stand. He had won, in lotteries and bets, about fifteen thousand.
It was a broken-link Handicap with a vengeance. It broke nearly all
the men concerned, and nearly broke the heart of Shackles' owner.
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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 Aspern Papers by Henry James: she was the oddest mixture of the shrinking and the direct.
"Well, she has often wondered about it herself and expressed
her wonder to you. She has insisted on it, so that she has
put the idea into your head that I am insufferably pushing.
Upon my word I think I have been very discreet.
And how completely your aunt must have lost every tradition
of sociability, to see anything out of the way in the idea
that respectable intelligent people, living as we do under
the same roof, should occasionally exchange a remark!
What could be more natural? We are of the same country,
and we have at least some of the same tastes, since, like you,
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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 Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: leaf which I brought home on Sunday between the leaves of that poem
whose motto is,
"Mariana in the moated grange."
On Saturday morning, nearly a week after I saw him on my walk,
Aunt Eliza proposed that we should go to Turo Street on a shopping
excursion; she wanted a cap, and various articles besides. As we
went into a large shop I saw Mr. Uxbridge at a counter buying
gloves; her quick eye caught sight of him, and she edged away,
saying she would look at some goods on the other side; I might wait
where I was. As he turned to go out he saw me and stopped.
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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 Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: at Terence all the time.
"Let me tell you," she said, speaking in nervous jerks, "it's always
about the seventh day one begins to get anxious. I daresay you've
been sittin' here worryin' by yourself. You think she's bad,
but any one comin' with a fresh eye would see she was better.
Mr. Elliot's had fever; he's all right now," she threw out.
"It wasn't anythin' she caught on the expedition. What's it matter--
a few days' fever? My brother had fever for twenty-six days once.
And in a week or two he was up and about. We gave him nothin' but milk
and arrowroot--"
Here Mrs. Chailey came in with a message.
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