| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: "Is it a planet?"
By George, Peters, think of it! "PLANET?" says I; "it's a city.
And moreover, it's one of the biggest and finest and - "
"There, there!" says he, "no time here for conversation. We don't
deal in cities here. Where are you from in a GENERAL way?"
"Oh," I says, "I beg your pardon. Put me down for California."
I had him AGAIN, Peters! He puzzled a second, then he says, sharp
and irritable -
"I don't know any such planet - is it a constellation?"
"Oh, my goodness!" says I. "Constellation, says you? No - it's a
State."
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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 Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: stand and switch their tails while their herdsmen on the bank coax
them back with 'Ari!' 'Ari!' 'Ari!' long and high, faint and
musical; and the minarets of Akbar's fort rise beyond against the
throbbing sky and the sun fills it all. This place I shall never
see more distinctly than I saw it that night on the veranda at
Government House, Calcutta, with the conviction, like a margin for
the picture, that its foreground had been very often occupied by the
woman I profoundly worshiped and Ingersoll Armour. She told me that
he had sent me a sketch of it, and I very much wished he hadn't.
One felt that the gift would carry a trifle of irony.
'He has told me,' she said once brusquely, 'how good you have been
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