| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic: wickedness, as to learn the trick she intended to play.
"Now you go away," said Ann to her companion, as she placed
herself on the steps of the Merchants-Bank.
It was nearly dark by this time, and as there were but few
persons in the street, Ann did not commence her part of the
performance till she saw a well-dressed gentleman approach;
whereupon she began to cry as she had done twice before that day.
"Boo, hoo, hoo! O, dear me! I shall be killed!" cried she, so
lustily, that the well-dressed gentleman could not decently avoid
inquiring the cause of her bitter sorrow.
"I haven't sold out," sobbed Ann.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence?
Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all
the real ones you fly from--will you risk the commission of so
fearful a mistake?
All profess to be content in the Union if all Constitutional rights
can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right, plainly written
in the Constitution, has been denied? I think not. Happily the human
mind is so constituted that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this.
Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision
of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force of numbers a
majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written Constitutional right,
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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 Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: at the time of the murder of the German missionaries, and
appointed him Generalissimo of the forces of the Yangtse, where
he no doubt promised to resist to the last all encroachments of
the foreigners in that part of the empire while Jung Lu was
retained in Peking as head of all the forces of the province of
Chihli and the Northern Squadron. She then appointed Kang Yi,
another conservative, equally as anti-foreign as Li Ping-heng, to
inspect the fortifications and garrisons of the empire, and to
raise an immense sum of money for the depleted treasury. In his
visits to the southern provinces, Kang Yi at this time raised not
less than two million taels, which was no doubt spent in the
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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 The Octopus by Frank Norris: fro, invariably in couples, coming in and out of the drug store,
the grocery store, and haberdasher's, or lingering in front of
the Post Office, which was on a corner under the I.O.O.F. hall.
Young men, in shirt sleeves, with brown, wicker cuff-protectors
over their forearms, and pencils behind their ears, bustled in
front of the grocery store, anxious and preoccupied. A very old
man, a Mexican, in ragged white trousers and bare feet, sat on a
horse-block in front of the barber shop, holding a horse by a
rope around its neck. A Chinaman went by, teetering under the
weight of his market baskets slung on a pole across his
shoulders. In the neighbourhood of the hotel, the Yosemite
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