| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: perfectly disgraceful. It is almost as bad as the way Gwendolen
flirts with you.
JACK. I am in love with Gwendolen. I have come up to town
expressly to propose to her.
ALGERNON. I thought you had come up for pleasure? . . . I call
that business.
JACK. How utterly unromantic you are!
ALGERNON. I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It
is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic
about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually
is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: come straight to his house, see old Captain Randall, the father of
the beach, take pot-luck, and go home to sleep when it got dark.
So it was high noon, and the schooner was under way before I set my
foot on shore at Falesa.
I had a glass or two on board; I was just off a long cruise, and
the ground heaved under me like a ship's deck. The world was like
all new painted; my foot went along to music; Falesa might have
been Fiddler's Green, if there is such a place, and more's the pity
if there isn't! It was good to foot the grass, to look aloft at
the green mountains, to see the men with their green wreaths and
the women in their bright dresses, red and blue. On we went, in
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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 The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: into the same soil, so Birotteau needed to trot about Saint-Gatien,
and amble along the Mail where he took his daily walk, and saunter
through the streets, and visit the three salons where, night after
night, he played his whist or his backgammon.
"Ah! I did not think of it!" replied Monsieur de Bourbonne, gazing at
the priest with a sort of pity.
All Tours was soon aware that Madame la Baronne de Listomere, widow of
a lieutenant-general, had invited the Abbe Birotteau, vicar of Saint-
Gatien, to stay at her house. That act, which many persons questioned,
presented the matter sharply and divided the town into parties,
especially after Mademoiselle Salomon spoke openly of a fraud and a
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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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: far from producing in Faraday either enmity or anger. At the
conclusion of the lecture, he quitted his accustomed seat, crossed
the theatre to the corner into which I had shrunk, shook me by the
hand, and brought me back to the table. Once more, subsequently,
and in connection with a related question, I ventured to differ from
him still more emphatically. It was done out of trust in the
greatness of his character; nor was the trust misplaced. He felt my
public dissent from him; and it pained me afterwards to the quick to
think that I had given him even momentary annoyance. It was,
however, only momentary. His soul was above all littleness and
proof to all egotism. He was the same to me afterwards that he had
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