| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: to speak to a young unmarried lady except under certain rarely occurring
conditions; but here at Vevey, what conditions could be better than these?--
a pretty American girl coming and standing in front of you in a garden.
This pretty American girl, however, on hearing Winterbourne's observation,
simply glanced at him; she then turned her head and looked over the parapet,
at the lake and the opposite mountains. He wondered whether he had gone
too far, but he decided that he must advance farther, rather than retreat.
While he was thinking of something else to say, the young lady turned
to the little boy again.
"I should like to know where you got that pole," she said.
"I bought it," responded Randolph.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: from some mythological menagerie, in short, the devil in person, who
could defy all human intervention, having at his command invisible
and infinite satanic powers.
But even Satan himself had no right to run at such speed over the
roads of the United States without a special permit, without a number
on his car, and without a regular license. And it was certain that
not a single municipality had given him permission to go two hundred
miles an hour. Public security demanded that some means be found to
unmask the secret of this terrible chauffeur.
Moreover, it was not only Pennsylvania that served as the theater of
his sportive eccentricities. The police reported his appearance in
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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 Menexenus by Plato: have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation, than longer
ones; and some kinds of composition, such as epistles or panegyrical
orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those, again, which
have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later age, or the
slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a motive or some
affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which seem to have
originated in a name or statement really occurring in some classical
author, are also of doubtful credit; while there is no instance of any
ancient writing proved to be a forgery, which combines excellence with
length. A really great and original writer would have no object in
fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator, the 'literary
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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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: would be unable to do more than sit at a window and look out upon
the sea and sky.
In 1841, his state became more serious than it had ever been before.
A published letter to Mr. Richard Taylor, dated March 11, 1843,
contains an allusion to his previous condition. 'You are aware,'
he says, 'that considerations regarding health have prevented me
from working or reading on science for the last two years.' This,
at one period or another of their lives, seems to be the fate of
most great investigators. They do not know the limits of their
constitutional strength until they have transgressed them. It is,
perhaps, right that they should transgress them, in order to
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