| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: searching my face with narrowed eyes, while the stout woman of the
kindly heart avoided my gaze, and pretended to look out the window.
As we pushed our way through the group, I fancied that it closed
around me ominously. The conductor said nothing, but led the way
without ceremony to the side of the berth.
"What's the matter?" I inquired. I was puzzled, but not
apprehensive. "Have you some of my things? I'd be thankful even
for my shoes; these are confoundedly tight."
Nobody spoke, and I fell silent, too. For one of the pillows had
been turned over, and the under side of the white case was streaked
with brownish stains. I think it was a perceptible time before I
The Man in Lower Ten |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be
a credible picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days
literally able to find a joy in the extraordinary flight of
heroism the occasion demanded of me. I now saw that I had been
asked for a service admirable and difficult; and there would
be a greatness in letting it be seen--oh, in the right quarter!--
that I could succeed where many another girl might have failed.
It was an immense help to me--I confess I rather applaud myself
as I look back!--that I saw my service so strongly and so simply.
I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in
the world the most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal
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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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: finally knew that Alice Staverton had made her lap an ample and
perfect cushion to him, and that she had to this end seated herself
on the lowest degree of the staircase, the rest of his long person
remaining stretched on his old black-and-white slabs. They were
cold, these marble squares of his youth; but HE somehow was not, in
this rich return of consciousness - the most wonderful hour, little
by little, that he had ever known, leaving him, as it did, so
gratefully, so abysmally passive, and yet as with a treasure of
intelligence waiting all round him for quiet appropriation;
dissolved, he might call it, in the air of the place and producing
the golden glow of a late autumn afternoon. He had come back, yes
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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 Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: he had passed. They did not look at each other, but walked directly to the
horses. She leaned against Dolly's neck while he tightened the girths. Then
she gathered the reins in her hand and waited. He looked at her as he bent
down, an appeal for forgiveness in his eyes; and in that moment her own eyes
answered. Her foot rested in his hands, and from there she vaulted into the
saddle. Without speaking, without further looking at each other, they turned
the horses' heads and took the narrow trail that wound down through the sombre
redwood aisles and across the open glades to the pasture-lands below. The
trail became a cow-path, the cow-path became a wood-road, which later joined
with a hay-road; and they rode down through the low-rolling, tawny California
hills to where a set of bars let out on the county road which ran along the
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