| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: of public adjunct, absorbing and emitting the passersby promiscuously.
The young Englishmen went in with everyone else, from curiosity, and saw
a couple of hundred men sitting on divans along a great marble-paved corridor,
with their legs stretched out, together with several dozen more standing
in a queue, as at the ticket office of a railway station, before a
brilliantly illuminated counter of vast extent. These latter persons,
who carried portmanteaus in their hands, had a dejected, exhausted look;
their garments were not very fresh, and they seemed to be rendering
some mysterious tribute to a magnificent young man with a waxed mustache,
and a shirtfront adorned with diamond buttons, who every now and
then dropped an absent glance over their multitudinous patience.
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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 Contrast by Royall Tyler: redundancy to praise him.
DIMPLE
I have done everything in my power to assist his
passion there: your delicacy, my dearest girl, would
be shocked at half the instances of neglect and mis-
behaviour.
CHARLOTTE
I don't know how I should bear neglect; but Mr.
Dimple must misbehave himself indeed, to forfeit my
good opinion.
DIMPLE
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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 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: his house in a fine spring afternoon, with the physical darkness of
despair upon my eyesight. Long after he made me a formal
retractation of the sermon and a formal apology for the pain he had
inflicted; adding drolly, but truly, 'You see, at that time I was
so much younger than you!' And yet even in those days there was
much to learn from him; and above all his fine spirit of piety,
bravely and trustfully accepting life, and his singular delight in
the heroic.
His piety was, indeed, a thing of chief importance. His views (as
they are called) upon religious matters varied much; and he could
never be induced to think them more or less than views. 'All dogma
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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 Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: army no longer marched but ran forwards, and by the way were met
by messengers upon messengers entreating them to make haste. By
the wonderful eagerness of the soldiers and their extraordinary
speed, Dion quickly came to the city and entered what is called
the Hecatompedon, sending his light-armed men at once to charge
the enemy, that, seeing them, the Syracusans might take courage.
In the meantime, he drew up in good order his full-armed men
and all the citizens that came in and joined him; forming his
battalions deep, and distributing his officers in many separate
commands, that he might, be able to attack from many quarters at
once, and so he more alarming to the enemy.
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