| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: of the kind of word-by-word examination of your author which is
rightly called "reading;" watching every accent and expression, and
putting ourselves always in the author's place, annihilating our own
personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be able
assuredly to say, "Thus Milton thought," not "Thus I thought, in
misreading Milton." And by this process you will gradually come to
attach less weight to your own "Thus I thought" at other times. You
will begin to perceive that what YOU thought was a matter of no
serious importance;--that your thoughts on any subject are not
perhaps the clearest and wisest that could be arrived at thereupon:-
in fact, that unless you are a very singular person, you cannot be
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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 War in the Air by H. G. Wells: smoke and steam he saw limbs and a collapsing, burst body fling
themselves to earth.
Bert was so astonished that he stood agape, and the bird-faced
officer might have cut him to the earth without a struggle. But
instead the bird-faced officer was running away through the
undergrowth, dodging as he went. Bert roused himself to a brief
ineffectual pursuit, but he had no stomach for further killing.
He returned to the mangled, scattered thing that had so recently
been the great Prince Karl Albert. He surveyed the scorched and
splashed vegetation about it. He made some speculative
identifications. He advanced gingerly and picked up the hot
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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 In the Cage by Henry James: Post-Office Guide, and the young man whipped out a new one;
whereupon he said he wished not to purchase, but only to consult
one a moment; with which, the copy kept on loan being produced, he
once more wandered off.
What was he doing to her? What did he want of her? Well, it was
just the aggravation of his "See here!" She felt at this moment
strangely and portentously afraid of him--had in her ears the hum
of a sense that, should it come to that kind of tension, she must
fly on the spot to Chalk Farm. Mixed with her dread and with her
reflexion was the idea that, if he wanted her so much as he seemed
to show, it might be after all simply to do for him the "anything"
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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 Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]: them. All her little life Tattine's Mother had been setting things straight
for her, drying every tear, and unravelling every tangle, so that Tattine was
pretty downhearted the day she discovered that there were some things that
were quite beyond even her Mother's power to alter. It was on a lovely June
morning that Tattine made the first of her unwelcome discoveries. She was
feeling particularly happy too, until she made it. She was sitting up in an
apple-tree, sketching, and doing it very well. She had taken only a few
drawing-lessons but had taken to them immensely, and now with one limb of the
tree for a seat and another one for an easel, she was working away at a pretty
chime tower, that stood on a neighbor's land.
Down on the grass beneath her Betsy and Doctor were lying. Betsy was a dear,
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