| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: She was conscious now, and her eyes seemed all the larger and
blacker for the whiteness of her face. Thorne held her hands,
and the other women were trying to still her tremblings.
No one but Gale saw the Yaqui in the background looking down
upon the Spanish girl. All of Yaqui's looks were strange; but this
singularly so. Gale marked it, and felt he would never forget.
Mercedes's beauty had never before struck him as being so exquisite,
so alluring as now when she lay stricken. Gale wondered if the
Indian was affected by her loveliness, her helplessness, or her
terror. Yaqui had seen Mercedes only a few times, and upon each
of these he had appeared to be fascinated. Could the strange
Desert Gold |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: She had already heard about poor Maria Seme-
novna. But, after that kind woman had been
murdered in such a ghastly way, and after Mahin,
who learnt it from Stepan, had communicated to
her all the facts concerning Maria Semenovna's
life, Lisa herself passionately desired to become
like her. She was a rich girl, and was afraid
that Mahin had been courting her because of her
money. So she resolved to give all she possessed
to the poor, and told Mahin about it.
Mahin was very glad to prove his disinterest-
The Forged Coupon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from U. S. Project Trinity Report by Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer: a gun-type weapon code-named LITTLE BOY, was detonated over the
Japanese city of Hiroshima. On 9 August, the FAT MAN nuclear bomb, a
plutonium-fueled implosion weapon identical to the TRINITY device, was
detonated over another Japanese city, Nagasaki. Two days later, the
Japanese Government informed the United States of its decision to end
the war. On 2 September 1945, the Japanese Empire officially
surrendered to the Allied Governments, bringing World War II to an
end.
In the years devoted to the development and construction of a nuclear
weapon, scientists and technicians expanded their knowledge of nuclear
fission and developed both the gun-type and the implosion mechanisms
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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 Glasses by Henry James: I forget whether he had come straight from the station; he was at
any rate out of breath with his news, which it took me however a
minute to apply.
"You mean that you've been with Mrs. Meldrum?"
"Yes, to ask her what she knows and how she comes to know it. It
worked upon me awfully--I mean what you told me." He made a
visible effort to seem quieter than he was, and it showed me
sufficiently that he had not been reassured. I laid, to comfort
him and smiling at a venture, a friendly hand on his arm, and he
dropped into my eyes, fixing them an instant, a strange distended
look which might have expressed the cold clearness of all that was
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