| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: I possessed, a London bookseller was commissioned to send us
everything he could procure bearing on Old Bailey trials. A
great package came in response to our order, and very soon we
were both absorbed, not so much in the trials as in following the
brilliant career of a Mr. Garrow, who appeared as counsel in many
of the cases. We sent for more books, and yet more, still intent
on Mr. Garrow, whose subtle cross-examination of witnesses and
masterly, if sometimes startling, methods of arriving at the
truth seemed more thrilling to us than any novel.
Occasionally other trials than those of the Old Bailey would be
included in the package of books we received from London; among
Kidnapped |
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: "Yes."
"What dogs do you take them to have been?"
"My dead dogs," she said in a whisper. . . She was taken out of
court, not to reappear there again. There was some kind of
ecclesiastical investigation, and the end of the business was
that the Judges disagreed with each other, and with the
ecclesiastical committee, and that Anne de Cornault was finally
handed over to the keeping of her husband's family, who shut her
up in the keep of Kerfol, where she is said to have died many
years later, a harmless madwoman.
So ends her story. As for that of Herve de Lanrivain, I had only
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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 A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: readily that he really believed them the best fellows in the world.
Without this help, however, life would have been simply impossible to
Raoul; as it was, it became so irksome that many men, even those of
the strongest constitutions, could not have borne it. A violent and
successful passion takes a great deal of space in an ordinary life;
but when it is connected with a woman in the social position of Madame
de Vandenesse it sucks the life out of a man as busy as Raoul. Here is
a list of the obligations his passion imposed upon him.
Every day, or nearly every day, he was obliged to be on horseback in
the Bois, between two and three o'clock, in the careful dress of a
gentleman of leisure. He had to learn at what house or theatre he
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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 Critias by Plato: CRITIAS: And I, Timaeus, accept the trust, and as you at first said that
you were going to speak of high matters, and begged that some forbearance
might be shown to you, I too ask the same or greater forbearance for what I
am about to say. And although I very well know that my request may appear
to be somewhat ambitious and discourteous, I must make it nevertheless.
For will any man of sense deny that you have spoken well? I can only
attempt to show that I ought to have more indulgence than you, because my
theme is more difficult; and I shall argue that to seem to speak well of
the gods to men is far easier than to speak well of men to men: for the
inexperience and utter ignorance of his hearers about any subject is a
great assistance to him who has to speak of it, and we know how ignorant we
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