| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: and blessed God for sending you to me, though you told
me four thousand lies and I believed every one of them
like a simpleton? Call me Aunt Sally--like you always done."
So I done it. And I says:
"Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along afoot
and take a smell of the woods, and we run across Lem
Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us to go with them
blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow Jubiter
Dunlap's dog, because he had told them just that minute--"
"Where did they see him?" says the old man; and when I
looked up to see how HE come to take an intrust in a little
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: the State funds.
"Buy why," said she, "have you given Eugenie three thousand francs a
year, and Charles no more than fifteen hundred?"
"Charles, my love, will be a man," replied he. "Fifteen hundred francs
are enough for him. With so much for certain, a man of courage is
above poverty. And if by chance your son should turn out a nonentity,
I do not wish him to be able to play the fool. If he is ambitious,
this small income will give him a taste for work.--Eugenie is a girl;
she must have a little fortune."
The father then turned to play with his boy, whose effusive affection
showed the independence and freedom in which he was brought up. No
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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 Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: rust. He felt very much annoyed at that, and directly afterwards
wondered at his own feeling. What did it matter? There soon
would be no key--no door--nothing! He paused, key in hand, and
asked himself whether he knew well what he was about. He went
out again on the verandah and stood by the table thinking. The
monkey jumped down, and, snatching a banana skin, absorbed itself
in picking it to shreds industriously.
"Forget!" muttered Almayer, and that word started before him a
sequence of events, a detailed programme of things to do. He
knew perfectly well what was to be done now. First this, then
that, and then forgetfulness would come easy. Very easy. He had
Almayer's Folly |
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 Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And then there was a light that showed the way for men to seek.
"We found it in the morning with an iron bar behind,
And there were chains around it; but no search could ever find,
Either in the ashes that were left, or anywhere,
A sign to tell of who or what had been with Stafford there.
"Stafford was a likely man with ideas of his own --
Though I could never like the kind that likes to live alone;
And when you met, you found his eyes were always on your shoes,
As if they did the talking when he asked you for the news.
"That's all, my son. Were I to talk for half a hundred years
I'd never clear away from there the cloud that never clears.
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