| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: voice was indeed scarce raised above a whisper, but emotion
clanged in it. 'What do you know about me? If you had
commanded the finest barque that ever sailed from Portland; if
you had been drunk in your berth when she struck the breakers
in Fourteen Island Group, and hadn't had the wit to stay there
and drown, but came on deck, and given drunken orders, and
lost six lives--I could understand your talking then! There,' he
said more quietly, 'that's my yarn, and now you know it. It's a
pretty one for the father of a family. Five men and a woman
murdered. Yes, there was a woman on board, and hadn't no
business to be either. Guess I sent her to Hell, if there is such
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: Burst from its sheathed emerald and disclose
The little quivering disk of golden fire
Which the bees know so well, for with it come
Pale boy's-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.
Then up and down the field the sower goes,
While close behind the laughing younker scares
With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows,
And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears,
And on the grass the creamy blossom falls
In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals
Steal from the bluebells' nodding carillons
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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 Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: the first floor a young woman stood looking down onto the canal.
She too was pale and her eyes were heavy with anxiety. She had been
pale and anxious even then, the day when she left the beautiful old
house in the quiet street, to start on this pleasure trip to Venice.
It had been no pleasure trip to her. She had seen the change in her
husband, a change that struck deep into his very being and altered
him in everything except in his love and tender care for her. "Oh,
why is it? what is the matter?" she asked her self a thousand times
a day. Could it be possible that he had discovered the secret which
tortured her, the only secret she had ever had from him, the secret
she had longed to confess to him a hundred times but had lacked
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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 Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: the masons and seamen went on board of the tender, but Mr.
Watt, with his squad of ten men, remained on the beacon
throughout the day. As it blew fresh from the N.W. in the
evening, it was found impracticable either to land the
building artificers or to take the artificers off the beacon,
and they were accordingly left there all night, but in
circumstances very different from those of the 1st of this
month. The house, being now in a more complete state, was
provided with bedding, and they spent the night pretty well,
though they complained of having been much disturbed at the
time of high-water by the shaking and tremulous motion of
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