| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: of the town with a weekly market, and an annual fair at which much
cheerful merry making and homely intoxication occurred; there was a
pack of hounds which hunted within five miles of London Bridge, and
the local gentry would occasionally enliven the place with valiant
cricket matches for a hundred guineas a side, to the vast excitement
of the entire population. It was very much the same sort of place
that it had been for three or four centuries. A Bromstead Rip van
Winkle from 1550 returning in 1750 would have found most of the old
houses still as he had known them, the same trades a little improved
and differentiated one from the other, the same roads rather more
carefully tended, the Inns not very much altered, the ancient
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: impossible to do it from day to day. Most of it is
hazy and indistinct, though here and there I have vivid
recollections of things that happened.
Especially do I remember the hunger we endured on the
mountains between Long Lake and Far Lake, and the calf
we caught sleeping in the thicket. Also, there are the
Tree People who dwelt in the forest between Long Lake
and the mountains. It was they who chased us into the
mountains and compelled us to travel on to Far Lake.
First, after we left the river, we worked toward the
west till we came to a small stream that flowed through
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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 Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: splendid specimens of its race. She was three feet high and four feet
long without counting her tail; this powerful weapon, rounded like a
cudgel, was nearly three feet long. The head, large as that of a
lioness, was distinguished by a rare expression of refinement. The
cold cruelty of a tiger was dominant, it was true, but there was also
a vague resemblance to the face of a sensual woman. Indeed, the face
of this solitary queen had something of the gaiety of a drunken Nero:
she had satiated herself with blood, and she wanted to play.
The soldier tried if he might walk up and down, and the panther left
him free, contenting herself with following him with her eyes, less
like a faithful dog than a big Angora cat, observing everything and
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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 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle: lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a
nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and
that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable
memory.
I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us
away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the
home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first
finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to
absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of
society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in
Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes |
