| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: picking up Billy in Denver streets that time, and doing for him because
his own home was not a good one. Governor Barker wrote Jessamine all
that; and she said, 'Why did you never tell me?' And I said it wasn't
anything to tell. And she just said to me, 'It shall be as if he was your
son and I was his mother.' And that's the first regular kiss she ever
gave me I didn't have to take myself. God bless her! God bless her!"
As we ate our supper, young Billy burst out of brooding silence: "I
didn't ask her about Laramie. So there!"
"Well, well, kid," said the cow-puncher, patting his head, "yu' needn't
to, I guess."
But Billy's eye remained sullen and jealous. He paid slight attention to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: to entertain, for they are burying, not him, but his dead body. His
friends had once been sureties that he would remain, and they shall now be
sureties that he has run away. Yet he would not die without the customary
ceremonies of washing and burial. Shall he make a libation of the poison?
In the spirit he will, but not in the letter. One request he utters in the
very act of death, which has been a puzzle to after ages. With a sort of
irony he remembers that a trifling religious duty is still unfulfilled,
just as above he desires before he departs to compose a few verses in order
to satisfy a scruple about a dream--unless, indeed, we suppose him to mean,
that he was now restored to health, and made the customary offering to
Asclepius in token of his recovery.
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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 Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: freedom seemed to blow into her face.
Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last months
had dropped from her: she was herself again, Nick's Susy, and
no one else's. She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyes
at the stately facades of the La Muette quarter, the
perspectives of bare trees, the awakening glitter of shop-
windows holding out to her all the things she would never again
be able to buy ....
In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner's window, and
said to herself: "Why shouldn't I earn my living by trimming
hats?" She met work-girls streaming out under a doorway, 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 Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: was too well known and liked to be a subject for suspicion; and,
moreover, he had one good friend in the crowd,--Captain Harris of
New Orleans, a veteran steamboat man and a market contractor, to
whom he had disposed of many a cargo of fresh pompano,
sheep's-head, and Spanish-mackerel ... Harris was the first to
step to land;--some ten of the party followed him. Nearly all
had lost some relative or friend in the great catastrophe;--the
gathering was serious, silent,--almost grim,--which formed about
Feliu.
Mateo, who had come to the country while a boy, spoke English
better than the rest of the cheniere people;--he acted as
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