| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: population; whether among the old local gentry, or the new settlers
whom the late wars had driven to take refuge within our walls.
It was in September, 1815, that I received a letter from the chief
secretary to the Prince of M----, a nobleman connected with the
diplomacy of Russia, from which I quote an extract: "I wish, in
short, to recommend to your attentions, and in terms stronger than
I know how to devise, a young man on whose behalf the czar himself
is privately known to have expressed the very strongest interest.
He was at the battle of Waterloo as an aide-de-camp to a Dutch
general officer, and is decorated with distinctions won upon that
awful day. However, though serving in that instance under English
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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 Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: me all over with that liquid, and I shall come to life again."
"There is very little of it," his son remarked.
Though Bartolommeo could no longer speak, he could still hear and
see. When those words dropped from Don Juan, his head turned with
appalling quickness, his neck was twisted like the throat of some
marble statue which the sculptor had condemned to remain
stretched out for ever, the wide eyes had come to have a ghastly
fixity.
He was dead, and in death he lost his last and sole illusion.
He had sought a shelter in his son's heart, and it had proved to
be a sepulchre, a pit deeper than men dig for their dead. The
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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 Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: those Master Words? I am more likely to give help than to ask it"
--Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue,
ripping-chisel talons at the end of it--"still I should like to
know."
"I will call Mowgli and he shall say them--if he will.
Come, Little Brother!"
"My head is ringing like a bee tree," said a sullen little
voice over their heads, and Mowgli slid down a tree trunk very
angry and indignant, adding as he reached the ground: "I come for
Bagheera and not for thee, fat old Baloo!"
"That is all one to me," said Baloo, though he was hurt and
The Jungle Book |
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 Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: In an hour and a half the colonel leaned back. I brought him a pony of
brandy and his black coffee, and set the box of Havana regalias on the
table.
"Gentlemen," says he, blowing out the smoke and trying to breathe it
back again, "when we view the eternal hills and the smiling and
beneficent landscape, and reflect upon the goodness of the Creator
who--"
"Excuse me, colonel," says I, "but there's some business to attend to
now"; and I brought out paper and pen and ink and laid 'em before him.
"Who do you want to send to for the money?" I asks.
"I reckon," says he, after thinking a bit, "to the vice-president of
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