| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: manner in which the lady and myself should be obliged to undress
and get to bed; - there was but one way of doing it, and that I
leave to the reader to devise; protesting as I do it, that if it is
not the most delicate in nature, 'tis the fault of his own
imagination, - against which this is not my first complaint.
Now, when we were got to bed, whether it was the novelty of the
situation, or what it was, I know not; but so it was, I could not
shut my eyes; I tried this side, and that, and turn'd and turn'd
again, till a full hour after midnight; when Nature and patience
both wearing out, - O, my God! said I.
- You have broke the treaty, Monsieur, said the lady, who had no
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: But still I did not get it. For it was not words,
it was nothing so articulate as speech, that Voke
Easeley uttered. Nor was it, to my ear, song. And
yet, as I listened, I began to see that a wild rhythm
pervaded the utterance; the Adam;'s apple leapt,
danced, swung round, twinkled, bounded, slid and
leapt again in time with a certain rough barbaric
measure; the sounds themselves were all discords,
but discords with a purpose; discords that took each
other by the hand and kicked and stamped their
brutal way together toward some objective point.
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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 Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: inn to take some repose. He followed, as he did so, the
course of the Volga, whose waters were almost hidden un-
der the countless number of boats floating on its bosom.
An hour after, Michael Strogoff was sleeping soundly
on one of those Russian beds which always seem so hard
to strangers, and on the morrow, the 17th of July, he awoke
at break of day.
He had still five hours to pass in Nijni-Novgorod; it
seemed to him an age. How was he to spend the morning
unless in wandering, as he had done the evening before,
through the streets? By the time he had finished his break-
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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 Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: to go with its mace and its mayor. And (obsessed by The Snicker)
it wanted less of Lady Ella. The cruelty and unreason of these
attacks upon his wife distressed the bishop beyond measure, and
baffled him hopelessly. He could not see any means of checking
them nor of defending or justifying her against them.
The palace was awaiting its tenant, but the controversies and
bitternesses were still swinging and swaying and developing when
King George was being crowned. Close upon that event came a wave
of social discontent, the great railway strike, a curious sense
of social and political instability, and the first beginnings of
the bishop's ill health.
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