| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: If you are men, as men you are in show,
You would not vse a gentle Lady so;
To vow, and sweare, and superpraise my parts,
When I am sure you hate me with your hearts.
You both are Riuals, and loue Hermia;
And now both Riuals to mocke Helena.
A trim exploit, a manly enterprize,
To coniure teares vp in a poore maids eyes,
With your derision; none of noble sort,
Would so offend a Virgin, and extort
A poore soules patience, all to make you sport,
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: Miss Lombard was silent, but Wyant hastened to assure the elder
lady of his friend's well-being.
"Ah--perhaps, then, he will come back some day to Siena," she
said, sighing. Wyant declared that it was more than likely; and
there ensued a pause, which he presently broke by saying to Miss
Lombard: "And you still have the picture?"
She raised her eyes and looked at him. "Should you like to see
it?" she asked.
On his assenting, she rose, and extracting the same key from the
same secret drawer, unlocked the door beneath the tapestry. They
walked down the passage in silence, and she stood aside with a
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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 Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: broke out again, "no Papists here!" and for a long time entertained
me with his religious opinions.
I must have been taken with Uma from the first, or I should
certainly have fled from that house, and got into the clean air,
and the clean sea, or some convenient river - though, it's true, I
was committed to Case; and, besides, I could never have held my
head up in that island if I had run from a girl upon my wedding-
night.
The sun was down, the sky all on fire, and the lamp had been some
time lighted, when Case came back with Uma and the negro. She was
dressed and scented; her kilt was of fine tapa, looking richer in
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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 Charmides by Plato: better way of saluting one another. The notion of him who dedicated the
inscription was, as I believe, that the god speaks to those who enter his
temple, not as men speak; but, when a worshipper enters, the first word
which he hears is 'Be temperate!' This, however, like a prophet he
expresses in a sort of riddle, for 'Know thyself!' and 'Be temperate!' are
the same, as I maintain, and as the letters imply (Greek), and yet they may
be easily misunderstood; and succeeding sages who added 'Never too much,'
or, 'Give a pledge, and evil is nigh at hand,' would appear to have so
misunderstood them; for they imagined that 'Know thyself!' was a piece of
advice which the god gave, and not his salutation of the worshippers at
their first coming in; and they dedicated their own inscription under the
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