| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: "Yes, sah, I was. Has they done pinched us ag'in,
boss?"
"Looks that way. Listen to me. Are there any
peaches in this layout? If there ain't I'll have to
throw up the sponge."
"There was three dozen, sah, when the game
opened this evenin'; but I reckon the gentlemen done
eat 'em all up. If you'd like to eat a fust-rate
orange, sah, I kin find you some."
"Get busy," ordered the Kid, sternly, and move
whatever peach crop you've got quick or there'll be
The Voice of the City |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: saw forty thousand stars flash before his eyeballs, and then,
with a great humming in his head, swooned dead away.
When Barnaby True came back to his senses again it was to find
himself being cared for with great skill and nicety, his head
bathed with cold water, and a bandage being bound about it as
carefully as though a chirurgeon was attending to him.
He could not immediately recall what had happened to him, nor
until he had opened his eyes to find himself in a strange cabin,
extremely well fitted and painted with white and gold, the light
of a lantern shining in his eyes, together with the gray of the
early daylight through the dead- eye. Two men were bending over
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction
of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular
amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be
implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express
and irrevocable.
The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people,
and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the
separation of the states. The people themselves can do this
also if they choose; but the executive, as such, has nothing to
do with it. His duty is to administer the present government,
as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him,
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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 Touchstone by Edith Wharton: was that he must see her again; and as consciousness affirmed
itself he felt an intense fear of losing the sense of her
nearness. But she was still close to him; her presence remained
the sole reality in a world of shadows. All through his working
hours he was re-living with incredible minuteness every incident
of their obliterated past; as a man who has mastered the spirit of
a foreign tongue turns with renewed wonder to the pages his youth
has plodded over. In this lucidity of retrospection the most
trivial detail had its significance, and the rapture of recovery
was embittered to Glennard by the perception of all that he had
missed. He had been pitiably, grotesquely stupid; and there was
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