| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: arch, you descend stairs that look as if they would land
you in a cellar, you turn to the back-window of a grimy
tenement in a lane:- and behold! you are face-to-face
with distant and bright prospects. You turn a corner,
and there is the sun going down into the Highland hills.
You look down an alley, and see ships tacking for the
Baltic.
For the country people to see Edinburgh on her hill-
tops, is one thing; it is another for the citizen, from
the thick of his affairs, to overlook the country. It
should be a genial and ameliorating influence in life; it
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: in high good-humour, "Sotherton! Yes, that is a place,
indeed, and we had a charming day there. William, you are
quite out of luck; but the next time you come, I hope dear
Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth will be at home, and I am sure
I can answer for your being kindly received by both.
Your cousins are not of a sort to forget their relations,
and Mr. Rushworth is a most amiable man. They are at
Brighton now, you know; in one of the best houses there,
as Mr. Rushworth's fine fortune gives them a right to be.
I do not exactly know the distance, but when you get back
to Portsmouth, if it is not very far off, you ought to go
Mansfield Park |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: heights of Parnes and Cithaeron, and between them and the sea included the
district of Oropus. The country was then, as what remains of it still is,
the most fertile in the world, and abounded in rich plains and pastures.
But in the course of ages much of the soil was washed away and disappeared
in the deep sea. And the inhabitants of this fair land were endowed with
intelligence and the love of beauty.
The Acropolis of the ancient Athens extended to the Ilissus and Eridanus,
and included the Pnyx, and the Lycabettus on the opposite side to the Pnyx,
having a level surface and deep soil. The side of the hill was inhabited
by craftsmen and husbandmen; and the warriors dwelt by themselves on the
summit, around the temples of Hephaestus and Athene, in an enclosure which
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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 Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: because parents will then read it, and learn that it is not
possable to make a good appearence, including furs, theater tickets
and underwear, for a Thousand Dollars a year, even if one wears
plain uncouth things beneath. I think this, too. My mother does not
know how much clothes and other things, such as manacuring, cost
these days. She merely charges things and my father gets the bills.
Nor do I consider it fair to expect me to atend Social Functions
and present a good appearence on a small Allowence, when I would
often prefer a simple game of tennis or to lie in a hammick, or to
converce with some one I am interested in, of the Other Sex.
It was mother who said a Thousand dollars a year and no extras. But
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