| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: and was to be gained by way of a winding and erratic path. But I have
travelled that path so often as to know every foot of it, and conceive my
surprise when I came upon the glade and found no laboratory. The quaint shed
structure with its red sandstone chimney was not. Nor did it look as if it
ever had been. There were no signs of ruin, no debris, nothing.
I started to walk across what had once been its site. "This," I said to
myself, "should be where the step went up to the door." Barely were the words
out of my mouth when I stubbed my toe on some obstacle, pitched forward, and
butted my head into something that FELT very much like a door. I reached out
my hand. It WAS a door. I found the knob and turned it. And at once, as the
door swung inward on its hinges, the whole interior of the laboratory impinged
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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 Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: In others, to be loud now for himself;
He knows now at what height low enemies
May reach his heart, and high friends let him fall;
But what not even such as he may know
Bedevils him the worst: his lark may sing
At heaven's gate how he will, and for as long
As joy may listen; but ~he~ sees no gate,
Save one whereat the spent clay waits a little
Before the churchyard has it, and the worm.
Not long ago, late in an afternoon,
I came on him unseen down Lambeth way,
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