| 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 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: "Well, you can't GET your nigger, that's all -- so
dry up your blubbering. Looky here -- do you think
YOU'D venture to blow on us? Blamed if I think I'd
trust you. Why, if you WAS to blow on us --"
He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out
of his eyes before. I went on a-whimpering, and says:
"I don't want to blow on nobody; and I ain't got
no time to blow, nohow. I got to turn out and find
my nigger."
He looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his
bills fluttering on his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: to the approaching army a picturesque effect, like a huge,
many-armed giant breathing flame into the darkness.
Placed on an overhanging hill, Welch and Semple cried aloud,
'The God of Jacob! The God of Jacob!' and prayed with
uplifted hands for victory. (3)
But still the Royalist troops closed in.
Captain John Paton was observed by Dalzell, who determined to
capture him with his own hands. Accordingly he charged
forward, presenting his pistols. Paton fired, but the balls
hopped off Dalzell's buff coat and fell into his boot. With
the superstition peculiar to his age, the Nonconformist
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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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: truly heroic personage, one whose name has become a proverb and a
legend, that so I might lift up your minds, even by the
contemplation of an old Eastern empire, to see that it, too, could
be a work and ordinance of God, and its hero the servant of the
Lord. For we are almost bound to call Cyrus, the founder of the
Persian Empire, by this august title for two reasons--First, because
the Hebrew Scriptures call him so; the next, because he proved
himself to be such by his actions and their consequences--at least
in the eyes of those who believe, as I do, in a far-seeing and far-
reaching Providence, by which all human history is
Bound by gold chains unto the throne of God.
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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 Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: habitual liveliness of phrasing lost its point. Had she lost her
animation? Was she ill unknowingly? Where had the light gone? It
was as if her attention was distracted. . . . As if every day when
she wrote her mind was busy about something else.
Abruptly at last he understood. A fact that had never been stated,
never formulated, never in any way admitted, was suddenly pointed to
convergently by a thousand indicating fingers, and beyond question
perceived to be THERE. . . .
He left a record of that moment of realization.
"Suddenly one night I woke up and lay still, and it was as if I had
never seen Amanda before. Now I saw her plainly, I saw her with
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