| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: sword of Roger Guiscard was a proud one:
Appulus et Calaber, Siculus mihi servit et Afer.
Every island, says Sir Edmund Head, and truly--for the name of
almost every island on the coast of England, Scotland, and Eastern
Ireland, ends in either EY or AY or OE, a Norse appellative, as is
the word "island" itself--is a mark of its having been, at some time
or other, visited by the Vikings of Scandinavia.
Norway, meanwhile, was convulsed by war; and what perhaps was of
more immediate consequence, Svend Fork-beard, whom we Englishmen
call Sweyn--the renegade from that Christian Faith which had been
forced on him by his German conqueror, the Emperor Otto II.--with
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London: for her, and we just had time to clear away in the boat when she
went down. The German mate was drowned. We lay all night to a
sea-drag, and next morning sighted your place here."
"I suppose you will go back to Von, now?" Sheldon queried.
"Nothing of the sort. Dad planned to go to the Solomons. I shall
look about for some land and start a small plantation. Do you know
any good land around here? Cheap?"
"By George, you Yankees are remarkable, really remarkable," said
Sheldon. "I should never have dreamed of such a venture."
"Adventure," Joan corrected him.
"That's right--adventure it is. And if you'd gone ashore on
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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 Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: "Hier wird Englisch gesprochen," it announced.
I blinked. Then I read it again. I shut my eyes,
and opened them again suddenly. The fat German letters
spoke their message as before--"English spoken here."
On reaching the office I told Norberg, the city
editor, about my find. He was not impressed. Norberg
never is impressed. He is the most soul-satisfying and
theatrical city editor that I have ever met. He is fat,
and unbelievably nimble, and keen-eyed, and untiring. He
says, "Hell!" when things go wrong; he smokes innumerable
cigarettes, inhaling the fumes and sending out the thin
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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 Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: his voice drove all the cashier's blood back to his heart.
Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for him, and was
whirled away so quickly, that when Castanier looked up he saw his foe
some hundred paces away from him, and before it even crossed his mind
to cut off the man's retreat the tilbury was far on its way up the
Boulevard Montmartre.
"Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural about this!" said
he to himself. "If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should
think that He had set Saint Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the
devil and the police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me
in the nick of time? Did any one ever see the like! But there, this is
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