| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship.
Your home, country, friends, all quitted. Neither time, nor health,
nor life, to be called your own. It would be hard, indeed"
(with a faltering voice), "if woman's feelings were to be
added to all this."
"We shall never agree upon this question," Captain Harville
was beginning to say, when a slight noise called their attention
to Captain Wentworth's hitherto perfectly quiet division of the room.
It was nothing more than that his pen had fallen down; but Anne was
startled at finding him nearer than she had supposed, and half inclined
to suspect that the pen had only fallen because he had been
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: advantages due to good fortune, but of which we are all as proud as of
a conquest. I must be silent as to the rest.--Like all youths, I was
in love with a woman six years older than myself. No one of you here,"
said he, looking carefully round the table, "can suspect her name or
recognize her. Ronquerolles alone, at the time, ever guessed my
secret. He had kept it well, but I should have feared his smile.
However, he is gone," said the Minister, looking round.
"He would not stay to supper," said Madame de Nucingen.
"For six months, possessed by my passion," de Marsay went on, "but
incapable of suspecting that it had overmastered me, I had abandoned
myself to that rapturous idolatry which is at once the triumph and 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 The Faith of Men by Jack London: understanding and intelligence, while the long-legged, ungainly
puppy hated only blindly, instinctively, without reason or method.
At first there were no refinements of cruelty (these were to come
later), but simple beatings and crude brutalities. In one of these
Batard had an ear injured. He never regained control of the riven
muscles, and ever after the ear drooped limply down to keep keen
the memory of his tormentor. And he never forgot.
His puppyhood was a period of foolish rebellion. He was always
worsted, but he fought back because it was his nature to fight
back. And he was unconquerable. Yelping shrilly from the pain of
lash and club, he none the less contrived always to throw in the
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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 A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: offered reparation in reason and out of reason, and, being
thoroughly primed, refused it all. Meantime some answer must be
made to Leary; and Fritze repeated on the 8th his oft-repeated
assurances that he was not authorised to deal with politics. The
same day Leary retorted: "The question is not one of diplomacy nor
of politics. It is strictly one of military jurisdiction and
responsibility. Under the shadow of the German fort at Mulinuu,"
continued the hyperbolical commander, "atrocities have been
committed. . . . And I again have the honour respectfully to
request to be informed whether or not the armed natives at Mulinuu
are under the protection of the Imperial German naval guard
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