| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: table d'hote.
The young man bowed and waved an apologetic hand.
"I do not intrude?" he inquired suavely.
Without waiting for a reply, he mounted the steps of the chapel,
glancing about him with the affable air of an afternoon caller.
"I see," he remarked with a smile, "that you know the hour at
which our saint should be visited."
Wyant agreed that the hour was indeed felicitous.
The stranger stood beamingly before the picture.
"What grace! What poetry!" he murmured, apostrophizing the St.
Catherine, but letting his glance slip rapidly about the chapel
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: swallow up all my days. You did not force yourself into my thoughts. You crept
in, always, and you were there always--how much, you will never know.
"But as time went by, Aunt Mildred and Uncle grew to dislike you. They grew
afraid. What was to become of me? You were destroying my life. My music? You
know how my dream of it has dimmed away. That spring, when I first met you--I
was twenty, and I was about to start for Germany. I was going to study hard.
That was four years ago, and I am still here in California.
"I had other lovers. You drove them away--No! no! I don't mean that. It was I
that drove them away. What did I care for lovers, for anything, when you were
near? But as I said, Aunt Mildred and Uncle grew afraid. There has been
talk‹friends, busybodies, and all the rest. The time went by. You did not
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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 Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: light, only an incommoding smoke. 'Was I sent here to my death?'
says he, and shook from head to foot. And then a thought flashed
in his mind. He crept forth on hands and knees to the brink of the
pit, and felt above him in the air. The rail had been fast to a
pair of uprights; it had only broken from the one, and still
depended from the other. The count set it back again as he had
found it, so that the place meant death to the first comer, and
groped out of the catacomb like a sick man. The next day, riding
in the Corso with the baron, he purposely betrayed a strong
preoccupation. The other (as he had designed) inquired into the
cause; and he, after some fencing, admitted that his spirits had
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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 Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: skin. He recognised his tent; and he riveted his eyes upon the ground
as though Hamilcar's daughter, when she disappeared, had sunk into the
earth.
The torn canvas flapped in the wind; the long rags of it sometimes
passed across his mouth, and he perceived a red mark like the print of
a hand. It was the hand of Narr' Havas, the token of their alliance.
Then Matho rose. He took a firebrand which was still smoking, and
threw it disdainfully upon the wrecks of his tent. Then with the toe
of his cothurn he pushed the things which fell out back towards the
flame so that nothing might be left.
Suddenly, without any one being able to guess from what point he had
Salammbo |
