| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: BAWD.
And I prithee tell me, how dost thou find the inclination of the
people, especially of the younger sort?
BOULT.
'Faith, they listened to me as they would have hearkened to their
father's testament. There was a Spaniard's mouth so watered,
that he went to bed to her very description.
BAWD.
We shall have him here to-morrow: with his best ruff on.
BOULT.
To-night, to-night. But, mistress, do you know the French knight
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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 Coxon Fund by Henry James: because he's--what do you call it in England?--of humble
extraction?"
"Not a bit. His father was a country school-master and his mother
the widow of a sexton, but that has nothing to do with it. I say
it simply because I know him well."
"But isn't it an awful drawback?"
"Awful--quite awful."
"I mean isn't it positively fatal?"
"Fatal to what? Not to his magnificent vitality."
Again she had a meditative moment. "And is his magnificent
vitality the cause of his vices?"
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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 Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: Almost at the same time, those who had crossed the barricade and
charged farther up the street, being met before the door of the
Chequers by the formidable hunchback and the whole reserve of the
Yorkists, began to come scattering backward, in the excess of
disarray and terror.
Dick and his fellows faced about, fresh men poured out of the
houses; a cruel blast of arrows met the fugitives full in the face,
while Gloucester was already riding down their rear; in the inside
of a minute and a half there was no living Lancastrian in the
street.
Then, and not till then, did Dick hold up his reeking blade and
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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 Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: sail the seas of America; not enough to have crushed the
Hollanders; not enough to have degraded the Venetians into her
bankers, and the Genoese into her mercenaries; not enough to have
incorporated into herself, with the kingdom of Portugal, the whole
East Indian trade of Portugal, while these fierce islanders
remained to assert, with cunning policy and texts of Scripture,
and, if they failed, with sharp shot and cold steel, free seas and
free trade for all the nations upon earth. He saw it, and his
countrymen saw it too: and therefore the Spanish Armada came: but
of that hereafter. And Don Guzman knew also, by hard experience,
that these same islanders, who sat in Salterne's parlor, talking
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