| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: with the horror over me, I half fell down the stairs and roused
Jim in the studio.
They all came with lights and blankets, and they carried him into
the tent and put him on the couch and tried to put whisky in his
mouth. But he could not swallow. And the silence became more and
more ominous until finally Anne got hysterical and cried, "He is
dead! Dead!" and collapsed on the roof.
But he was not. Just as the lights in the tent began to have red
rings around them and Jim's voice came from away across the
river, somebody said, "There, he swallowed that," and soon after,
he opened his eyes. He muttered something that sounded like
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: fireplace in her salon, a room almost as unpretentious as the other
salons in Carentan; for, in order not to wound the narrow view of her
guests, she denied herself the luxuries to which she was accustomed.
The floor of her reception room was not even waxed, the walls were
still hung with dingy tapestries; she used the country furniture,
burned tallow candles, and followed the customs of the town,--adopting
provincial life, and not shrinking from its pettiness or its many
disagreeable privations. Knowing, however, that her guests would
pardon luxuries if provided for their own comfort, she neglected
nothing which conduced to their personal enjoyment, and gave them,
more especially, excellent dinners.
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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 Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: "And is this the state of a wise man?" asked the beard, looking at
the sky, "to threaten his friend for speaking truth?"
"Now he's even praying! I can't believe this!"
"'We cannot see around corners,' says Germulphius, 'so what is left
to the man who refuses to see in a straight line?'"
"Someone like your wife," answered the glasses. "No doubt by now
she's found twelve more insupportably ridiculous assertions in your
paper on aperceptual phenomenalism."
"Well, at least my wife reads my papers. At least my wife can read."
"My wife is an avid reader of literature."
"Since when did the television listings become 'literature'? That's
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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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: formerly, for now people go to them, not for retirement into the
country, but for good company; of which, that I may speak to the
ladies as well as other authors do, there are in these villages,
nay, in all, three or four excepted, excellent conversation, and a
great deal of it, and that without the mixture of assemblies,
gaming-houses, and public foundations of vice and debauchery; and
particularly I find none of those incentives kept up on this side
the country.
Mr. Camden, and his learned continuator, Bishop Gibson, have
ransacked this country for its antiquities, and have left little
unsearched; and as it is not my present design to say much of what
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