| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: He wondered, and hoped that some day he would see the change taking place
before his very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it.
Poor Sibyl! What a romance it had all been! She had often mimicked
death on the stage. Then Death himself had touched her and taken
her with him. How had she played that dreadful last scene?
Had she cursed him, as she died? No; she had died for love of him,
and love would always be a sacrament to him now. She had atoned
for everything by the sacrifice she had made of her life.
He would not think any more of what she had made him go through,
on that horrible night at the theatre. When he thought of her,
it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the world's stage
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: panic, are fleeing through the trees. In my right leg
is a burning pain; and from the flesh, protruding head
and shaft from either side, is an arrow of the
Fire-Man. Not only did the pull and strain of it pain
me severely, but it bothered my movements and made it
impossible for me to keep up with Lop-Ear.
At last I gave up, crouching in the secure fork of a
tree. Lop-Ear went right on. I called to him--most
plaintively, I remember; and he stopped and looked
back. Then he returned to me, climbing into the fork
and examining the arrow. He tried to pull it out, but
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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 Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: praise; and the banking circle, inspired by her, formed a project to
humiliate the aristocracy. They succeeded in that aim by a fire of
sarcasms which presently brought down the pride of the Right coterie.
Madame Servin's arrival put a stop to the struggle. With the
shrewdness that usually accompanies malice, Amelie Thirion had
noticed, analyzed, and mentally commented on the extreme preoccupation
of Ginevra's mind, which prevented her from even hearing the bitterly
polite war of words of which she was the object. The vengeance
Mademoiselle Roguin and her companions were inflicting on Mademoiselle
Thirion and her group had, therefore, the fatal effect of driving the
young ULTRAS to search for the cause of the silence so obstinately
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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 Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: "A strange pair to die together," Moran repeated; "but we can do
that better than we could have"--she looked away from him--"could
have LIVED together," she finished, and smiled again.
"And yet," said Wilbur, "these last few weeks here on board the
schooner, we have been through a good deal--together. I don't
know," he went on clumsily, "I don't know when I've been--when
I've had--I've been happier than these last weeks. It is queer,
isn't it? I know, of course, what you'll say. I've said it to
myself often of late. I belong to the city and to my life there,
and you--you belong to the ocean. I never knew a girl like you--
never knew a girl COULD be like you. You don't know how
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