| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: so as to know what not to do. Of course, one does it all the same,
but it is so pleasant to be warned. Now if some one doesn't go and
fetch Mr. Podgers at once, I shall have to go myself.'
'Let me go, Lady Windermere,' said a tall handsome young man, who
was standing by, listening to the conversation with an amused
smile.
'Thanks so much, Lord Arthur; but I am afraid you wouldn't
recognise him.'
'If he is as wonderful as you say, Lady Windermere, I couldn't well
miss him. Tell me what he is like, and I'll bring him to you at
once.'
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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 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: where Moses was when the candle went out. I said I
didn't know; I hadn't heard about it before, no way.
"Well, guess," he says.
"How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I never
heard tell of it before?"
"But you can guess, can't you? It's just as easy."
"WHICH candle?" I says.
"Why, any candle," he says.
"I don't know where he was," says I; "where
was he?"
"Why, he was in the DARK! That's where he was!"
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: entered with zeal and alacrity into those large and important
arrangements, which were necessary for, or conducive to the
object of their incorporation; and, among other things, purchased
a great part of the stock in trade, and trading establishments,
of the Michilimackinac Company of Canada. Your petitioners also,
with the expectation of great public and private advantages from
the use of the said establishments, ordered, during the spring
and summer of 1810, an assortment of goods from England, suitable
for the Indian trade; which, in consequence of the President's
proclamation of November of that year, were shipped to Canada
instead of New York, and have been transported, under a very
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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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: the most part an encouraging attention, which, in some, went the
length of really brilliant and helpful suggestion, he gradually
felt a recurrence of his old doubts. Either his hearers were not
sincere, or else they had less power to aid him than they
boasted. His interminable conferences resulted in nothing, and
as the benefit of the long rest made itself felt, it produced an
increased mental lucidity which rendered inaction more and more
unbearable. At length he discovered that on certain days
visitors from the outer world were admitted to his retreat; and
he wrote out long and logically constructed relations of his
crime, and furtively slipped them into the hands of these
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