| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: afresh, he raised his sword.
Eustace was usually no craven: but he was cowed. Between agony and
shame, he had no heart to resist. Martyrdom, which looked so
splendid when consummated selon les regles on Tower Hill or Tyburn,
before pitying, or (still better) scoffing multitudes, looked a
confused, dirty, ugly business there in the dark forest; and as he
lay, a stream of moonlight bathed his mighty cousin's broad clear
forehead, and his long golden locks, and his white terrible blade,
till he seemed, to Eustace's superstitious eye, like one of those
fair young St. Michaels trampling on the fiend, which he had seen
abroad in old German pictures. He shuddered; pulled a packet from
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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 Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: III
MODERN RURAL SPORTS
Jeff Peters must be reminded. Whenever he is called upon, pointedly,
for a story, he will maintain that his life has been as devoid of
incident as the longest of Trollope's novels. But lured, he will
divulge. Therefore I cast many and divers flies upon the current of
his thoughts before I feel a nibble.
"I notice," said I, "that the Western farmers, in spite of their
prosperity, are running after their old populistic idols again."
"It's the running season," said Jeff, "for farmers, shad, maple trees
and the Connemaugh river. I know something about farmers. I thought I
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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 Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: long. This young snob was just of age - he was six or seven
thousand of his days old - say two million of our years - and he
had all the puppy airs that belong to that time of life - that
turning-point when a person has got over being a boy and yet ain't
quite a man exactly. If it had been anywhere else but in heaven, I
would have given him a piece of my mind. Well, anyway, Billings
had the grandest reception that has been seen in thousands of
centuries, and I think it will have a good effect. His name will
be carried pretty far, and it will make our system talked about,
and maybe our world, too, and raise us in the respect of the
general public of heaven. Why, look here - Shakespeare walked
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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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: their politics as in their religion, was fatal to any rise of that
spirit of revolt against authority the importance of which, as a
factor in intellectual progress, we have already seen.
The whitened tables of the Pontifices preserved carefully the
records of the eclipses and other atmospherical phenomena, and what
we call the art of verifying dates was known to them at an early
time; but there was no spontaneous rise of physical science to
suggest by its analogies of law and order a new method of research,
nor any natural springing up of the questioning spirit of
philosophy with its unification of all phenomena and all knowledge.
At the very time when the whole tide of Eastern superstition was
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