| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: quite so simple a matter never to see Lord Lambeth again.
I have seen it coming on."
"You are mistaken," said Bessie. "You don't understand."
"My dear child, don't be perverse," rejoined her sister.
"I know him better, certainly, if you mean that," said Bessie.
"And I like him very much. But I don't like him enough to make
trouble for him with his family. However, I don't believe in that."
"I like the way you say 'however,'" Mrs. Westgate exclaimed.
"Come; you would not marry him?"
"Oh, no," said the young girl.
Mrs. Westgate for a moment seemed vexed. "Why not, pray?" she demanded.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: sort of glamor cast by vice. As deputy, he never speaks, but he votes
RIGHT. He behaves in his own home as he does in the Chamber.
Consequently, he is held to be one of the best husbands in France.
Though not susceptible of lively interest, he never scolds, unless, to
be sure, he is kept waiting. His friends have named him "dull
weather,"--aptly enough, for there is neither clear light nor total
darkness about him. He is like all the ministers who have succeeded
one another in France since the Charter. A woman with principles could
not have fallen into better hands. It is certainly a great thing for a
virtuous woman to have married a man incapable of follies.
Occasionally some fops have been sufficiently impertinent to press the
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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 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: any out."
"You must sit still all you can and keep your back out of sight.
The front is all right. I shall have a new ribbon for my hair, and
Marmee will lend me her little pearl pin, and my new slippers are
lovely, and my gloves will do, though they aren't as nice as I'd like."
"Mine are spoiled with lemonade, and I can't get any new ones,
so I shall have to go without," said Jo, who never troubled herself
much about dress.
"You must have gloves, or I won't go," cried Meg decidedly.
"Gloves are more important than anything else. You can't dance
without them, and if you don't I should be so mortified."
Little Women |
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: But I am neither writing the history or searching the antiquity of
the abbey, or town; my business is the present state of the place.
The abbey is demolished; its ruins are all that is to be seen of
its glory: out of the old building, two very beautiful churches are
built, and serve the two parishes, into which the town is divided,
and they stand both in one churchyard. Here it was, in the path-
way between these two churches, that a tragical and almost unheard-
of act of barbarity was committed, which made the place less
pleasant for some time than it used to be, when Arundel Coke, Esq.,
a barrister-at-law, of a very ancient family, attempted, with the
assistance of a barbarous assassin, to murder in cold blood, and in
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