| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: was an awful bore. What I wanted was early to bed and early to
rise, and something to DO; and when my work was done, I wanted to
sit quiet, and smoke and think - not tear around with a parcel of
giddy young kids. You can't think what I suffered whilst I was
young."
"How long was you young?"
"Only two weeks. That was plenty for me. Laws, I was so lonesome!
You see, I was full of the knowledge and experience of seventy-two
years; the deepest subject those young folks could strike was only
A-B-C to me. And to hear them argue - oh, my! it would have been
funny, if it hadn't been so pitiful. Well, I was so hungry for the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: all that made up his present life suddenly grew dim before him,
moments when, if he did not cease to believe in the aims he had
set himself, he ceased to see them and could evoke no confidence
in them but was seized by a remembrance of, and--terrible to
say--a regret for, the change of life he had made.
The only thing that saved him in that state of mind was obedience
and work, and the fact that the whole day was occupied by prayer.
He went through the usual forms of prayer, he bowed in prayer, he
even prayed more than usual, but it was lip-service only and his
soul was not in it. This condition would continue for a day, or
sometimes for two days, and would then pass of itself. But those
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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 Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: At other seasons temperate, or some thought
That like an adder creeps from point to point,
That like a madman crawls from cell to cell,
Poisons my palate and makes appetite
A loathing, not a longing.
[Goes aside.]
GUIDO. Sweet Bianca,
This common chapman wearies me with words.
I must go hence. To-morrow I will come.
Tell me the hour.
BIANCA. Come with the youngest dawn!
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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 Lin McLean by Owen Wister: bright pistol that lay in his hand. He held it tenderly, cherishing it,
and did not cease slowly to polish it. Revery filled his eyes, and in his
whole face was sadness unmasked, because only the animals were there to
perceive his true feelings. Sunlight and waving shadows moved together
upon the green of his pasture, cattle and horses loitered in the opens by
the stream. Down Box Elder's course, its valley and golden-chimneyed
bluffs widened away into the level and the blue of the greater valley.
Upstream the branches and shining, quiet leaves entered the mountains
where the rock chimneys narrowed to a gateway, a citadel of shafts and
turrets, crimson and gold above the filmy emerald of the trees. Through
there the road went up from the cotton-woods into the cool quaking asps
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