| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: She threw down the parasol, thrust her letter into her
bodice, and catching up her skirts began to run.
She was slight and light, with a natural ease and quickness
of gait, but she could not recall having run a yard since
she had romped with Owen in his school-days; nor did she
know what impulse moved her now. She only knew that run she
must, that no other motion, short of flight, would have been
buoyant enough for her humour. She seemed to be keeping
pace with some inward rhythm, seeking to give bodily
expression to the lyric rush of her thoughts. The earth
always felt elastic under her, and she had a conscious joy
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: And first a single life to be snatched from a deadly place,
A life, the root of revenge, surviving plant of the race:
And next the race to be raised anew, and the lands of the clan
Repeopled. So Rahero designed, a prudent man
Even in wrath, and turned for the means of revenge and escape:
A boat to be seized by stealth, a wife to be taken by rape.
Still was the dark lagoon; beyond on the coral wall,
He saw the breakers shine, he heard them bellow and fall.
Alone, on the top of the reef, a man with a flaming brand
Walked, gazing and pausing, a fish-spear poised in his hand.
The foam boiled to his calf when the mightier breakers came,
Ballads |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: Neither did those who lived three hundred years ago, when America
was first discovered, leave any accounts from which even an
hypothesis could be formed. Tradition - that perishable, yet
ever renewed monument of the pristine world - throws no light
upon the subject. It is an undoubted fact, however, that in this
part of the globe thousands of our fellow-beings had lived. When
they came hither, what was their origin, their destiny, their
history, and how they perished, no one can tell. How strange does
it appear that nations have existed, and afterwards so completely
disappeared from the earth that the remembrance of their very
names is effaced; their languages are lost; their glory is
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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 A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: from the father, and she feared him--not for herself, you may be sure
of that. When Pierre Cambremer came back and saw furniture in his
house which the neighbors had lent to his wife, he said,--
"'What is all this?'
"The poor woman, more dead than alive, replied:
"'We have been robbed.'
"'Where is Jacques?'
"'Jacques is off amusing himself.'
"No one knew where the scoundrel was.
"'He amuses himself too much,' said Pierre.
"Six months later the poor father heard that his son was about to be
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