| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: wood.
This time the idea occurred simultaneously to us. We
were trying to escape out of the Fire People's
territory. What better way than by crossing the river
on these logs? We climbed on board and shoved off. A
sudden something gripped the catamaran and flung it
downstream violently against the bank. The abrupt
stoppage almost whipped us off into the water. The
catamaran was tied to a tree by a rope of twisted
roots. This we untied before shoving off again.
By the time we had paddled well out into the current,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: character. Ginevra was able, therefore, to study Luigi, to know him;
and before long they mutually esteemed each other. The girl, who was
older than Luigi, found a charm in being courted by a youth already so
grand, so tried by fate,--a youth who joined to the experience of a
man the graces of adolescence. Luigi, on his side, felt an unspeakable
pleasure in allowing himself to be apparently protected by a woman,
now twenty-five years of age. Was it not a proof of love? The union of
gentleness and pride, strength and weakness in Ginevra were, to him,
irresistible attractions, and he was utterly subjugated by her. In
short, before long, they loved each other so profoundly that they felt
no need of denying to each other their love, nor yet of telling it.
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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 Daisy Miller by Henry James: At last he finished his coffee and lit a cigarette. Presently a
small boy came walking along the path--an urchin of nine or ten.
The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression
of countenance, a pale complexion, and sharp little features.
He was dressed in knickerbockers, with red stockings, which displayed
his poor little spindle-shanks; he also wore a brilliant red cravat.
He carried in his hand a long alpenstock, the sharp point of which
he thrust into everything that he approached--the flowerbeds,
the garden benches, the trains of the ladies' dresses. In front
of Winterbourne he paused, looking at him with a pair of bright,
penetrating little eyes.
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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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: to infancy, to be supported, and directed, and perpetually set upon
your feet, by the hand of some one else. The air besides, as it is
supplied to you by the busy millers on the platform, closes the
eustachian tubes and keeps the neophyte perpetually swallowing,
till his throat is grown so dry that he can swallow no longer. And
for all these reasons-although I had a fine, dizzy, muddle-headed
joy in my surroundings, and longed, and tried, and always failed,
to lay hands on the fish that darted here and there about me, swift
as humming-birds - yet I fancy I was rather relieved than otherwise
when Bain brought me back to the ladder and signed to me to mount.
And there was one more experience before me even then. Of a
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