| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: After this happy fashion the drive went, until at last it entered
the broad, deep, and navigable stretches of the river from Redding
to the lake. Here, barring the accident of an extraordinary flood,
the troubles were over. On the broad, placid bosom of the stream
the logs would float. A crew, following, would do the easy work of
sacking what logs would strand or eddy in the lazy current; would
roll into the faster waters the component parts of what were by
courtesy called jams, but which were in reality pile-ups of a few
hundred logs on sand bars mid-stream; and in the growing tepid
warmth of summer would tramp pleasantly along the river trail. Of
course, a dry year would make necessary a larger crew and more
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: attained the apogee of its splendor. The trumpet-blasts of Wagram were
still sounding an echo in the heart of the Austrian monarchy. Peace
was being signed between France and the Coalition. Kings and princes
came to perform their orbits, like stars, round Napoleon, who gave
himself the pleasure of dragging all Europe in his train--a
magnificent experiment in the power he afterwards displayed at
Dresden. Never, as contemporaries tell us, did Paris see
entertainments more superb than those which preceded and followed the
sovereign's marriage with an Austrian archduchess. Never, in the most
splendid days of the Monarchy, had so many crowned heads thronged the
shores of the Seine, never had the French aristocracy been so rich or
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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 Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: He moved down the stream a few steps and took a second panful of dirt.
Again came the careful washing, the jealous herding of the golden specks, and
the wantonness with which he sent them flying into the stream when he had
counted their number.
"Five," he muttered, and repeated, "five."
He could not forbear another survey of the hill before filling the pan farther
down the stream. His golden herds diminished. " Four, three, two, two, one,"
were his memory-tabulations as he moved down the stream. When but one speck of
gold rewarded his washing, he stopped and built a fire of dry twigs. Into this
he thrust the gold-pan and burned it till it was blue-black. He held up the
pan and examined it critically. Then he nodded approbation. Against such a
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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 Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: That my posterity, sham'd with the note,
Shall curse my bones, and hold it for no sin
To wish that I their father had not been.
'What win I, if I gain the thing I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy:
Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
Or sells eternity to get a toy?
For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?
Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,
Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?
'If Collatinus dream of my intent,
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