| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: tick with absorbing interest, the other would look on
with interest as strong, the two heads bowed together
over the slate, and the two souls dead to all things else.
At last luck seemed to settle and abide with Joe. The
tick tried this, that, and the other course, and got as
excited and as anxious as the boys themselves, but time
and again just as he would have victory in his very
grasp, so to speak, and Tom's fingers would be twitching
to begin, Joe's pin would deftly head him off, and keep
possession. At last Tom could stand it no longer.
The temptation was too strong. So he reached out
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: Poor souls, my heart yearns for them. But the truth is they are
vile, odious, insolent, ill-conditioned, stinking brutes, not truly
human - for what is a man without a fetter? - and you cannot be too
particular not to touch or speak with them."
After this talk, the child would never pass one of the unfettered
on the road but what he spat at him and called him names, which was
the practice of the children in that part.
It chanced one day, when he was fifteen, he went into the woods,
and the ulcer pained him. It was a fair day, with a blue sky; all
the birds were singing; but Jack nursed his foot. Presently,
another song began; it sounded like the singing of a person, only
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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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: interrupting her daughter. "How can you show any consideration to such
a man? In the first place, I don't like his drinking water only; it is
not wholesome. Why does he object to see a woman eating? What queer
notion is that! But he is mad. All you tell us about him is
impossible. A man cannot leave his home without a word, and never come
back for ten days. And then he tells you he has been to Dieppe to
paint the sea. As if any one painted the sea! He crams you with a pack
of tales that are too absurd."
Augustine opened her lips to defend her husband; but Madame Guillaume
enjoined silence with a wave of her hand, which she obeyed by a
survival of habit, and her mother went on in harsh tones: "Don't talk
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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 Pericles by William Shakespeare: At Tarsus, and by Cleon train'd
In music, letters; who hath gain'd
Of education all the grace,
Which makes her both the heart and place
Of general wonder. But, alack,
That monster envy, oft the wrack
Of earned praise, Marina's life
Seeks to take off by treason's knife.
And in this kind hath our Cleon
One daughter, and a wench full grown,
Even ripe for marriage-rite; this maid
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