| 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: Knox. He sleeps within call of the church that so often
echoed to his preaching.
Hard by the reformer, a bandy-legged and garlanded
Charles Second, made of lead, bestrides a tun-bellied
charger. The King has his backed turned, and, as you
look, seems to be trotting clumsily away from such a
dangerous neighbour. Often, for hours together, these
two will be alone in the Close, for it lies out of the
way of all but legal traffic. On one side the south wall
of the church, on the other the arcades of the Parliament
House, enclose this irregular bight of causeway and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: came thither; but Diogenes of Sinope, at their first meeting in the
street there, saluted him with the ambiguous expression, "O
Dionysius, how little you deserve your present life!" Upon which
Dionysius stopped and replied, "I thank you, Diogenes, for your
condolence." "Condole with you!" replied Diogenes; "do you not
suppose that, on the contrary, I am indignant that such a slave as
you, who, if you had your due, should have been let alone to grow
old, and die in the state of tyranny, as your father did before you,
should now enjoy the ease of private persons, and be here to sport
and frolic it in our society?" So that when I compare those sad
stories of Philistus, touching the daughters of Leptines, where he
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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 Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: which for some days past had surrounded him, inflamed and stirred
his blood. At last he was going to plunge into all that he had
dreamed of!
"I don't know the address," La Faloise resumed.
"She lives on a third floor in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the
Rue de l'Arcade and the Rue Pesquier," said Georges all in a breath.
And when the other looked at him in much astonishment, he added,
turning very red and fit to sink into the ground with embarrassment
and conceit:
"I'm of the party. She invited me this morning."
But there was a great stir in the drawing room, and Vandeuvres and
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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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: conscious of my youth in the midst of other and (as I fondly
thought) more gifted students. All was vain: that he had passed a
riotous nonage, that he was a zealot, that he twice displayed
(compared with his grotesque companions) some tincture of soldierly
resolution and even of military common sense, and that he figured
memorably in the scene on Magus Muir, so much and no more could I
make out. But whenever I cast my eyes backward, it is to see him
like a landmark on the plains of history, sitting with his cloak
about his mouth, inscrutable. How small a thing creates an
immortality! I do not think he can have been a man entirely
commonplace; but had he not thrown his cloak about his mouth, or
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