| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: calamity, and inflicting on Captain Palliser himself a sensible
disappointment.
All the time of my stay on the rock we lived well. We had small ale
and brandy, and oatmeal, of which we made our porridge night and
morning. At times a boat came from the Castleton and brought us a
quarter of mutton, for the sheep upon the rock we must not touch, these
being specially fed to market. The geese were unfortunately out of
season, and we let them be. We fished ourselves, and yet more often
made the geese to fish for us: observing one when he had made a
capture and searing him from his prey ere he had swallowed it.
The strange nature of this place, and the curiosities with which it
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: Some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had
swords on and had shawl belts with long, silver-
mounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels had
their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted
and spilt the freight out on the ground. We didn't
reckon the swords was any good to the dead people
any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols.
We took a small box, too, because it was so handsome
and inlaid so fine; and then we wanted to bury the
people; but there warn't no way to do it that we could
think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that
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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 Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: the magnificent wall. Only his head peeped out occasionally as if
looking for something. His dark, thoughtful eyes glanced over the
little village spread out on one side of the castle, and over the
railway station, its most imposing building. Then they would turn
back again to the entrance gate in the wall near where he stood.
It was a heavy iron-barred gate, its handsome ornamentation outlined
in snow, and behind it the body of a large dog could be occasionally
seen. This dog was an enormous grey Ulmer hound.
The peddler stood for a long time motionless behind the pillar, then
he looked at his watch. "It's nearly time," he murmured, and looked
over towards the station again, where lights and figures were
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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 From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: river being filled up with sands, which, some say, the tides drive
up in stormy weather from the sea; others say it is by sands washed
from the lead-mines in the hills; the last of which, by the way, I
take to be a mistake, the sand from the hills being not of quantity
sufficient to fill up the channel of a navigable river, and, if it
had, might easily have been stopped by the townspeople from falling
into the river. But that the sea has choked up the river with sand
is not only probable, but true; and there are other rivers which
suffer in the like manner in this same country.
This town of Lostwithiel retains, however, several advantages which
support its figure--as, first, that it is one of the Coinage Towns,
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