| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood
on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to
unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas
knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides.
I was rather literary in college--one year I wrote a series of very
solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News."--and now I was going
to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most
limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an
epigram--life is much more successfully looked at from a single window,
after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of
The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: sponsors) replied 'I do!'
'The Church, the State, and everything established--but the
masters?' quoth the captain.
Again the novice said 'I do.'
Having said it, he listened meekly to the captain, who in an
address prepared for such occasions, told him how that under that
same Constitution (which was kept in a strong box somewhere, but
where exactly he could not find out, or he would have endeavoured
to procure a copy of it), the 'prentices had, in times gone by,
had frequent holidays of right, broken people's heads by scores,
defied their masters, nay, even achieved some glorious murders in
Barnaby Rudge |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: and sending the whole shell backwards with a jerk. The point, you
see, is sharp and tongue-like; only flattened, not horizontally,
like a tongue, but perpendicularly, so as to form, as it was
intended, a perfect sand-plough, by which the animal can move at
will, either above or below the surface of the sand. (2)
But for colour and shape, to what shall we compare it? To polished
cornelian, says Mr. Gosse. I say, to one of the great red
capsicums which hang drying in every Covent-garden seedsman's
window. Yet is either simile better than the guess of a certain
lady, who, entering a room wherein a couple of Cardium tuberculatum
were waltzing about a plate, exclaimed, "Oh dear! I always heard
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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 The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: of quarrels, and with the single exception of Secretary Chase,
not one of them left the cabinet harboring feelings of resentment
or bitterness toward his late chief. Even when, in one case, it
became necessary for the good of the service, for Mr. Lincoln to
ask a cabinet minister to resign, that gentleman not only
unquestioningly obeyed, but entered into the presidential
campaign immediately afterward, working heartily and effectively
for his reelection. As for Secretary Chase, the President was so
little disturbed by his attitude that, on the death of Roger B.
Taney, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, he
made him his successor, giving him the highest judicial office in
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