| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: Cap'n Eli Stormfield, of San Francisco! - make him out a clean bill
of health, and let him in."
I opened my eyes. Sure enough, it was a Pi Ute Injun I used to
know in Tulare County; mighty good fellow - I remembered being at
his funeral, which consisted of him being burnt and the other
Injuns gauming their faces with his ashes and howling like
wildcats. He was powerful glad to see me, and you may make up your
mind I was just as glad to see him, and feel that I was in the
right kind of a heaven at last.
Just as far as your eye could reach, there was swarms of clerks,
running and bustling around, tricking out thousands of Yanks 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 Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: describe how the displacement of a point at the equator
of Jupiter was twenty-seven times as rapid as on the earth,
causing the polar compression to be about 2,378 miles; how the axis,
being nearly perpendicular, caused the days and nights to be
nearly of the same length, and the seasons to be invariable;
and how the amount of light and heat received by the planet
is only a twenty-fifth part of that received by the earth,
the average distance from the sun being 475,693,000 miles.
"And how about these satellites? Sometimes, I suppose, Jupiter has
the benefit of four moons all shining at once?" asked Servadac.
Of the satellites, Lieutenant Procope went on to say that one
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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 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Victorianhad any idea how casually their daughters were
accustomed to be kissed. "Servant-girls are that way," says Mrs.
Huston-Carmelite to her popular daughter. "They are kissed first
and proposed to afterward."
But the Popular Daughter becomes engaged every six months between
sixteen and twenty-two, when she arranges a match with young
Hambell, of Cambell & Hambell, who fatuously considers himself
her first love, and between engagements the P. D. (she is
selected by the cut-in system at dances, which favors the
survival of the fittest) has other sentimental last kisses in the
moonlight, or the firelight, or the outer darkness.
This Side of Paradise |
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 Hiero by Xenophon: At any rate, nothing will persuade him but he must go through life
armed, and on all occasions drag about with him armed satellites. In
the next place, the private citizen, even during an expedition into
hostile territory,[6] can comfort himself in the reflection that as
soon as he gets back home he will be safe from further peril. Whereas
the tyrant knows precisely the reverse; as soon as he arrives in his
own city, he will find himself in the centre of hostility at once. Or
let us suppose that an invading army, superior in force, is marching
against a city: however much the weaker population, whilst they are
still outside their walls, may feel the stress of danger, yet once
within their trenches one and all expect to find themselves in
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