| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: Nur. Hie to your Chamber, Ile find Romeo
To comfort you, I wot well where he is:
Harke ye your Romeo will be heere at night,
Ile to him, he is hid at Lawrence Cell
Iul. O find him, giue this Ring to my true Knight,
And bid him come, to take his last farewell.
Exit
Enter Frier and Romeo.
Fri. Romeo come forth,
Come forth thou fearfull man,
Affliction is enamor'd of thy parts
Romeo and Juliet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: A young man as handsome and attractive as Georges might very well
aspire to the hand of a rich creole; and the clerks in Desroches'
office, all of them the sons of poor parents, having never frequented
the great world, or, indeed, known anything about it, put themselves
into their best clothes on the following day, impatient enough to
behold, and be presented to the Mexican Marquise de las Florentinas y
Cabirolos.
"What luck," said Oscar to Godeschal, as they were getting up in the
morning, "that I had just ordered a new coat and trousers and
waistcoat, and that my dear mother had made me that fine outfit! I
have six frilled shirts of fine linen in the dozen she made for me. We
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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 A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: personification of all the ages of cruelty, ferocity, and
brutality from which he had descended. Cold, cunning,
calculating; he was, also, in marked contrast to most of his
fellows, a slave to that brute passion which the waning
demands for procreation upon their dying planet has almost
stilled in the Martian breast.
The thought that the divine Dejah Thoris might fall into
the clutches of such an abysmal atavism started the cold
sweat upon me. Far better that we save friendly bullets for
ourselves at the last moment, as did those brave frontier
women of my lost land, who took their own lives rather than
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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 Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: and ruffians. A long and wordy paper of precautions, a fo'c's'le
bill of rights, must be read separately to each man. I had now
the benefit of hearing it five times in brisk succession; and you
would suppose I was acquainted with its contents. But the
commissioner (worthy man) spends his days in doing little
else; and when we bear in mind the parallel case of the
irreverent curate, we need not be surprised that he took the
passage tempo prestissimo, in one roulade of gabble --that I,
with the trained attention of an educated man, could gather but
a fraction of its import--and the sailors nothing. No profanity
in giving orders, no sheath-knives, Midway Island and any
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