| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: lady about the tiny apple-trees with the very, very small apples on
them, and other rows of apple-trees over those, and other rows on
top of those, and on top of all a row of big round red apples.
Then the lady might have said: Yes, there were apple-trees like that
in the world, for all the nursery walls were papered like that, with
a row of big round red apples at the top.
But Bessie Bell did not think of or remember that then; she just
leaned up against the lady and swung one of her little feet up and
down, back and forth, as she sat on the stone bench: she was so
happy to have met the Wisest Woman in the world.
The people who passed by looked, and turned to look again, at the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: The other was that one from a magazine of a boy dying on a battlefield
and crying "Mother!"
Two sorts of maternity - one quiet, peaceful, not always beautiful,
but the thing by which and to which she had been reared; the other
vicarious, of all the world.
"Don't you love me - that way?" he said, his cheek still against hers.
"I don't know."
"You don't know!"
It was then that he straightened away from her and looked without seeing
at the blur of light which was the phonograph. Sara Lee, glancing up,
saw him then as he was in the photograph, face set and head thrust
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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 Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: The advantage of the present session over the last is immense.
Where that investigated, this has the facts. Where that walked by faith,
this may walk by sight. Where that halted, this must go forward,
and where that failed, this must succeed, giving the country whole
measures where that gave us half-measures, merely as a means of
saving the elections in a few doubtful districts. That Congress saw
what was right, but distrusted the enlightenment of the loyal masses;
but what was forborne in distrust of the people must now be done
with a full knowledge that the people expect and require it.
The members go to Washington fresh from the inspiring presence of the people.
In every considerable public meeting, and in almost every conceivable way,
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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 Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: let her go.'
It was a shock when it came, plump, like that; and I was horrified
to feel how completely every other consideration was lost for the
instant in the immense relief that it prefigured. To be my whole
complete self again, without the feeling that a fraction of me was
masquerading about in Cecily! To be freed at once, or almost, from
an exacting condition and an impossible ideal! 'Oh!' I exclaimed,
and my eyes positively filled. 'You ARE good, Dacres, but I
couldn't let you do that.'
His undisguised stare brought me back to a sense of the proportion
of things. I saw that in the combination of influences that had
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