| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: hall.
My friend greeted my husband, and with a mysterious nod of her
head in the direction of the young woman she said: "Chiu shih na
ke,--that's it."
XVI
The Social Life of the Chinese Woman
The manners and customs of the Chinese, and their social
characteristics, have employed many pens and many tongues, and
will continue to furnish all inexhaustible field for students of
sociology, of religion, of philosophy, of civilization, for
centuries to come. Such studies, however, scarcely touch the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: the powerful house of Argyle, and emblems of the high hereditary
offices of Justiciary of Scotland, and Master of the Royal
Household, which they long enjoyed. At the upper end of this
magnificent gallery stood the Marquis himself, the centre of a
splendid circle of Highland and Lowland gentlemen, all richly
dressed, among whom were two or three of the clergy, called in,
perhaps, to be witnesses of his lordship's zeal for the Covenant.
The Marquis himself was dressed in the fashion of the period,
which Vandyke has so often painted, but his habit was sober and
uniform in colour, and rather rich than gay. His dark
complexion, furrowed forehead, and downcast look, gave him the
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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 Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: much; I began to understand how far above others are those that
come of a noble race. There was still something of the opera girl
in my gowns, in my way of dressing my hair. In a moment I saw the
distance between me and good taste. Next time you will receive a
duchess, you shall not know me again! Ah! how good you have been
to your Claudine! How many and many a time I have thanked you for
telling me those things! What interest lay in those few words! You
have taken thought for that thing belonging to you called
Claudine? /This/ imbecile would never have opened my eyes; he
thinks that everything I do is right; and besides, he is much too
humdrum, too matter-of-fact to have any feeling for the beautiful.
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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 Burning Daylight by Jack London: The dry canon gave place to one with a slender ribbon of running
water. The trail ran into a wood-road, and the wood-road emerged
across a small flat upon a slightly travelled county road. There
were no farms in this immediate section, and no houses. The soil
was meagre, the bed-rock either close to the surface or
constituting the surface itself. Manzanita and scrub-oak,
however, flourished and walled the road on either side with a
jungle growth. And out a runway through this growth a man
suddenly scuttled in a way that reminded Daylight of a rabbit.
He was a little man, in patched overalls; bareheaded, with a
cotton shirt open at the throat and down the chest. The sun was
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