| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: name is Ernest if ever you attempt to deny it to me, or to
Gwendolen, or to any one else. [Puts the card in his pocket.]
JACK. Well, my name is Ernest in town and Jack in the country, and
the cigarette case was given to me in the country.
ALGERNON. Yes, but that does not account for the fact that your
small Aunt Cecily, who lives at Tunbridge Wells, calls you her dear
uncle. Come, old boy, you had much better have the thing out at
once.
JACK. My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It
is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It
produces a false impression,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: To find an answer to this problem which at that point in my experience
I could not solve, I determined to study conditions in Europe. Perhaps
there I might discover a new approach, a great illumination. Just
before the outbreak of the war, I visited France, Spain, Germany and
Great Britain. Everywhere I found the same dogmas and prejudices
among labor leaders, the same intense but limited vision, the same
insistence upon the purely economic phases of human nature, the same
belief that if the problem of hunger were solved, the question of the
women and children would take care of itself. In this attitude I
discovered, then, what seemed to me to be purely masculine reasoning;
and because it was purely masculine, it could at best be but half
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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 La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: attentions were devoted to Rosalie. By dint of studying the girl, I
observed in her, as in every woman whom we make our ruling thought, a
variety of good qualities; she was clean and neat; she was handsome, I
need not say; she soon was possessed of every charm that desire can
lend to a woman in whatever rank of life. A fortnight after the
notary's visit, one evening, or rather one morning, in the small
hours, I said to Rosalie:
" 'Come, tell me all you know about Madame de Merret.'
" 'Oh!' she said, 'I will tell you; but keep the secret carefully.'
" 'All right, my child; I will keep all your secrets with a thief's
honor, which is the most loyal known.'
La Grande Breteche |
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 Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: at the Widow Douglas'. She'll have ice-cream! She
has it most every day -- dead loads of it. And she'll be
awful glad to have us."
"Oh, that will be fun!"
Then Becky reflected a moment and said:
"But what will mamma say?"
"How'll she ever know?"
The girl turned the idea over in her mind, and said
reluctantly:
"I reckon it's wrong -- but --"
"But shucks! Your mother won't know, and so
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
