| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: and sticks; and straws, and worms, and addle-eggs, and wood-lice,
and leeches, and odds and ends, and omnium-gatherums, and this,
that, and the other, enough to fill nine museums.
Tom could hardly stand against the stream, and hid behind a rock.
But the trout did not; for out they rushed from among the stones,
and began gobbling the beetles and leeches in the most greedy and
quarrelsome way, and swimming about with great worms hanging out of
their mouths, tugging and kicking to get them away from each other.
And now, by the flashes of the lightning, Tom saw a new sight - all
the bottom of the stream alive with great eels, turning and
twisting along, all down stream and away. They had been hiding for
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: workmen whom Trefusis found out of employment. It bore the
following inscription:
THIS IS THE MONUMENT OF HENRIETTA JANSENIUS WHO WAS BORN ON THE
26TH JULY, 1856, MARRIED TO SIDNEY TREFUSIS ON THE 23RD AUGUST,
1875, AND WHO DIED ON THE 21ST DECEMBER IN THE SAME YEAR.
Mr. Jansenius took this as an insult to his daughter's memory,
and, as the tomb was much smaller than many which had been
erected in the cemetery by families to whom the Janseniuses
claimed superiority, cited it as an example of the widower's
meanness. But by other persons it was so much admired that
Trefusis hoped it would ensure the prosperity of its designer.
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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 Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: little general knowledge of this type of fact. The correlation
of the various epileptic mental states with pathological lying is
well recognized. In many of the cases cited by foreign writers
it has turned out that the individual was subject to epileptic
seizures. It is another illustration of the great variety of
epileptic phenomena. Something of a point has been made in the
literature heretofore that abnormalities of sexual life are
unduly correlated with the inclination to pathological lying, and
the conclusion is sometimes drawn, as by Stemmermann (loc. cit.
p. 90), that the two prove a degenerative tendency. Our material
would not tend to show this nearly as much as it would prove that
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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 Europeans by Henry James: smiling too, "I have heard of young ladies staying at home
for bad weather, but never for good. Your sister,whom I met
at the gate, tells me you are depressed," he added.
"Depressed? I am never depressed."
"Oh, surely, sometimes," replied Mr. Brand, as if he thought this
a regrettable account of one's self.
"I am never depressed," Gertrude repeated. "But I am sometimes wicked.
When I am wicked I am in high spirits. I was wicked just now to my sister."
"What did you do to her?"
"I said things that puzzled her--on purpose."
"Why did you do that, Miss Gertrude?" asked the young man.
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