| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: 'Not another soul. We might just as well have started together.'
'Oh, well, we couldn't tell. Beastly awkward if there had been
anybody.'
'Yes,' she said, but thrust up her under lip indifferently.
Then, with the effect of turning to the business in hand, she bent
her eyes upon him understandingly and smiled in frank reference to
something that had not been mentioned. 'It's goodbye Simla, isn't
it?' she said. He smiled in response and put his hand upon her
firm, round arm, possessively, and they began to talk.
Ram Singh, all unaware, kept his horses at their steady clanking
downward gallop, and Simla, clinging to the hilltops, was brushed by
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: his way of thinking was making him irritable, and taking his mind
from his business.
"Can you beat that!" he would exclaim as he turned away from some
disagreement with Douglas, his temper ruffled for the day.
Polly was utterly unconscious of the unfriendly glances cast in
her direction as she came running into the garden, leading the
widow's two children.
She nodded gaily to Julia Strong, who was coming through the
gate, then hurried to Mrs. Willoughby, begging that the children
be allowed to remain a little longer. She was making up a new
game, she said, and needed Willie and Jennie for the set.
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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 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: a serious wound; if a mere touch from the vertex of a Private Soldier
brings with it danger of death; -- what can it be to run against
a Woman, except absolute and immediate destruction? And when a Woman
is invisible, or visible only as a dim sub-lustrous point,
how difficult must it be, even for the most cautious,
always to avoid collision!
Many are the enactments made at different times in the different
States of Flatland, in order to minimize this peril;
and in the Southern and less temperate climates where
the force of gravitation is greater, and human beings more liable to
casual and involuntary motions, the Laws concerning Women
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
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 Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: And to another, right so, and to all the lords of the emperor's
lineage, each after other, as they be of estate. And when they be
all cleped, they enter each after other, and present the white
horses to the emperor, and then go their way. And then after, all
the other barons every of them, give him presents or jewels or some
other thing, after that they be of estate. And then after them,
all the prelates of their law, and religious men and others; and
every man giveth him something. And when that all men have thus
presented the emperor, the greatest of dignity of the prelates
giveth him a blessing, saying an orison of their law.
And then begin the minstrels to make their minstrelsy in divers
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