| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: To turn away from the balconies and the music,
The sunlit afternoons,
To hear behind you there a far-off laughter
Lost in a stirring of sand among dry dunes . . .
Die not sadly, you whom life has beaten!
Lift your face up, laughing, die like a queen!
Take cold flowers of foam in your warm white fingers!
Death's but a change of sky from blue to green . . .
As evening falls,
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow . . . the music breathes upon us,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: Miss Jeannie - that was your mother, dear, she was cruel ta'en up about
her hair, it was unco' tender, ye see - 'Houts, Miss Jeannie,' I would
say, 'just fling your washes and your French dentifrishes in the back o'
the fire, for that's the place for them; and awa' down to a burn side,
and wash yersel' in cauld hill water, and dry your bonny hair in the
caller wind o' the muirs, the way that my mother aye washed hers, and
that I have aye made it a practice to have wishen mines - just you do
what I tell ye, my dear, and ye'll give me news of it! Ye'll have hair,
and routh of hair, a pigtail as thick's my arm,' I said, `and the
bonniest colour like the clear gowden guineas, so as the lads in kirk'll
no can keep their eyes off it!' Weel, it lasted out her time, puir
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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 New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: to me the memory of an enormous bleak room with its ceiling going up
to heaven and its floor covered irregularly with patched and
defective oilcloth and a dingy mat or so and a "surround" as they
call it, of dark stained wood. Here and there against the wall are
trunks and boxes. There are cupboards on either side of the
fireplace and bookshelves with books above them, and on the wall and
rather tattered is a large yellow-varnished geological map of the
South of England. Over the mantel is a huge lump of white coral
rock and several big fossil bones, and above that hangs the portrait
of a brainy gentleman, sliced in half and displaying an interior of
intricate detail and much vigour of coloring. It is the floor I
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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 Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: looked up to him; his high integrity and considerable fortune
contributed to make him a person of importance. From that time forth
he felt a very decided aversion for the Sieur du Crosier; and though
there was little rancor in his composition, he set others against the
sometime forage-contractor. Du Croisier, on the other hand, was a man
to bear a grudge and nurse a vengeance for a score of years. He hated
Chesnel and the d'Esgrignon family with the smothered, all-absorbing
hate only to be found in a country town. His rebuff had simply ruined
him with the malicious provincials among whom he had come to live,
thinking to rule over them. It was so real a disaster that he was not
long in feeling the consequences of it. He betook himself in
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