| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: I saw her mastheads above the ridge as the sun went down."
He raised sharply his simple face, overcharged by a terrible
growth of whisker, and emitted his usual ejaculations:
"Bless my soul, sir! You don't say so!"
My second mate was a round-cheeked, silent young man, grave beyond
his years, I thought; but as our eyes happened to meet I
detected a slight quiver on his lips. I looked down at once.
It was not my part to encourage sneering on board my ship.
It must be said, too, that I knew very little of my officers.
In consequence of certain events of no particular significance,
except to myself, I had been appointed to the command only a
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: "What in the world does he do all the blessed day? He cannot always be
staring at the blue sky and the stars that God has hung up there like
lanterns. That dear boy has known trouble. But why do he and the old
man hardly ever speak to each other?"
Then she lost herself in wonderment and in thoughts which, in her
woman's brain, were tangled like a skein of thread.
The old man and his young companion had gone into one of the schools
for which the Rue du Fouarre was at that time famous throughout
Europe. At the moment when Jacqueline's two lodgers arrived at the old
School des Quatre Nations, the celebrated Sigier, the most noted
Doctor of Mystical Theology of the University of Paris, was mounting
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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: children attended the public schools with the white man's children,
and apparently without objection from any quarter. To impress me
with my security from recapture and return to slavery, Mr. Johnson
assured me that no slave-holder could take a slave out of New Bedford;
that there were men there who would lay down their lives to save me
from such a fate.
The fifth day after my arrival, I put on the clothes of a common laborer,
and went upon the wharves in search of work. On my way down Union street
I saw a large pile of coal in front of the house of Rev. Ephraim Peabody,
the Unitarian minister. I went to the kitchen door and asked the privilege
of bringing in and putting away this coal. "What will you charge?"
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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 $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: who are satisfied by the gossamer of Romance, and who can be
allured by the verbosity of high-flown words, rich in language,
but poor and barren in sentiment. Beset, as she has been, by the
intellectual vulgar, the selfish, the designing, the cunning, the hidden,
and the artful--no wonder she has sometimes folded her wings in despair,
and forgotten her HEAVENLY mission in the delirium of imagination;
no wonder she searches out some wild desert, to find a peaceful home.
But this cannot always continue. A new era is moving gently onward,
old things are rapidly passing away; old superstitions, old prejudices,
and old notions are now bidding farewell to their old associates
and companions, and giving way to one whose wings are plumed
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