| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: night was upon them. They camped round a well overshadowed by palm
trees under which they had previously concealed a store of provisions.
Not surmising that the notion of flight would occur to their prisoner,
they contented themselves with binding his hands, and after eating a
few dates, and giving provender to their horses, went to sleep.
When the brave Provencal saw that his enemies were no longer watching
him, he made use of his teeth to steal a scimiter, fixed the blade
between his knees, and cut the cords which prevented him from using
his hands; in a moment he was free. He at once seized a rifle and a
dagger, then taking the precautions to provide himself with a sack of
dried dates, oats, and powder and shot, and to fasten a scimiter 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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: dead with a touch, or wheeling them right-about-face in a square
yard. The type of face and character of bearing are surprisingly
un-American. The first ranged from something like the pure
Spanish, to something, in its sad fixity, not unlike the pure
Indian, although I do not suppose there was one pure blood of
either race in all the country. As for the second, it was a matter
of perpetual surprise to find, in that world of absolutely
mannerless Americans, a people full of deportment, solemnly
courteous, and doing all things with grace and decorum. In dress
they ran to colour and bright sashes. Not even the most
Americanised could always resist the temptation to stick a red rose
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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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: it was in spite of this to befall after luncheon that she went off
alone and that, with a tryst taken for a day of her company in
London, they lingered another night. She had, during the morning--
spent in a way that he was to remember later on as the very climax
of his foretaste, as warm with presentiments, with what he would
have called collapses--had all sorts of things out with Strether;
and among them the fact that though there was never a moment of her
life when she wasn't "due" somewhere, there was yet scarce a
perfidy to others of which she wasn't capable for his sake. She
explained moreover that wherever she happened to be she found a
dropped thread to pick up, a ragged edge to repair, some familiar
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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 Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: great distance to the rocks, where he lay so battered and dented
that he could neither move nor groan.
Others of the Monkeys caught the Scarecrow, and with their
long fingers pulled all of the straw out of his clothes and head.
They made his hat and boots and clothes into a small bundle and
threw it into the top branches of a tall tree.
The remaining Monkeys threw pieces of stout rope around
the Lion and wound many coils about his body and head and legs,
until he was unable to bite or scratch or struggle in any way.
Then they lifted him up and flew away with him to the Witch's castle,
where he was placed in a small yard with a high iron fence around it,
The Wizard of Oz |
