| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: O piper, lightly footing, lightly piping on your way,
Tho' your music thrills and pierces far and near,
I tell you you had better pipe to someone else to-day,
For you cannot pipe my fancy from my dear.
You sound the note of travel through the hamlet and the town;
You would lure the holy angels from on high;
And not a man can hear you, but he throws the hammer down
And is off to see the countries ere he die.
But now no more I wander, now unchanging here I stay;
By my love, you find me safely sitting here:
And pipe you ne'er so sweetly, till you pipe the hills away,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: war, whilst others, by favor of his authority, should insult the
citizens with their impudent luxury.
All this appears to have aggravated party quarrels in Rome, and
to have encouraged the soldiers in acts of license and rapacity.
And, accordingly, when Caesar came home, he acquitted Dolabella,
and, being created the third time consul, took, not Antony, but
Lepidus, for his colleague. Pompey's house being offered for
sale, Antony bought it, and, when the price was demanded of him,
loudly complained. This, he tells us himself, and because he
thought his former services had not been recompensed as they
deserved, made him not follow Caesar with the army into Libya.
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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 Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: military expeditions. I was saved!
"When the jailer came I proposed that he should help me to escape and
fly with me, and that we should take with us as much as we could
carry. There was no reason for hesitation; he agreed. Vessels were
about to sail for the Levant. All possible precautions were taken.
Bianca furthered the schemes which I suggested to my accomplice. It
was arranged that Bianca should only rejoin us in Smyrna for fear of
exciting suspicion. In a single night the hole was enlarged, and we
dropped down into the Secret Treasury of Venice.
"What a night that was! Four great casks full of gold stood there. In
the outer room silver pieces were piled in heaps, leaving a gangway
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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 Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: "I wish you'd leave off staring at me."
Then with the air of one who has delivered an ultimatum, he began
replacing the screw hammer in the wallet.
The heath-keeper never moved. Possibly he raised his eyebrows,
and certainly he stared harder than he did before. "You're pretty
unsociable," he said slowly, as Mr. Hoopdriver seized the handles
and stood ready to mount as soon as the cart had passed.
The indignation gathered slowly but surely. "Why don't you ride
on a private road of your own if no one ain't to speak to you?"
asked the heath-keeper, perceiving more and more clearly the
bearing of the matter. "Can't no one make a passin' remark to
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