| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: pique waistcoat, dazzling shirt-front, a blue-bottle coat, violet silk
gloves, gold buckles to his shoes and his breeches, and, lastly, a
touch of powder and a little queue tied with black ribbon. His face
was remarkable for a pair of eyebrows as thick as bushes, beneath
which sparkled his gray eyes; and for a square nose, thick and long,
which gave him somewhat the air of the abbes of former times. His
countenance did not belie him. Pere Cardot belonged to that race of
lively Gerontes which is now disappearing rapidly, though it once
served as Turcarets to the comedies and tales of the eighteenth
century. Uncle Cardot always said "Fair lady," and he placed in their
carriages, and otherwise paid attention to those women whom he saw
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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 Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: she was not, until that still moment in the Indian Ocean, when
silently, gently as a drowned body might rise out of the depths of a
pool, that knowledge of love dead and honour gone for ever floated
up into my consciousness.
"And then I felt that Amanda had cheated me! Outrageously.
Abominably.
"Now, so far as my intelligence goes, there is not a cloud upon this
question. My demand upon Amanda was outrageous and I had no right
whatever to her love or loyalty. I must have that very clear. . . .
"This aristocratic life, as I conceive it, must be, except
accidentally here and there, incompatible with the domestic life.
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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 The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: look like that. Is mother right? she thought. And now she hoped her
mother was right. Am I being extravagant? Perhaps it was extravagant.
Just for a moment she had another glimpse of that poor woman and those
little children, and the body being carried into the house. But it all
seemed blurred, unreal, like a picture in the newspaper. I'll remember it
again after the party's over, she decided. And somehow that seemed quite
the best plan...
Lunch was over by half-past one. By half-past two they were all ready for
the fray. The green-coated band had arrived and was established in a
corner of the tennis-court.
"My dear!" trilled Kitty Maitland, "aren't they too like frogs for words?
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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 Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: dwellings of the living. I suppose only the rich or honourable
were secured from corruption, and the rest left to the course of
nature.
"But it is commonly supposed that the Egyptians believed the soul
to live as long as the body continued undissolved, and therefore
tried this method of eluding death."
"Could the wise Egyptians," said Nekayah, "think so grossly of the
soul? If the soul could once survive its separation, what could it
afterwards receive or suffer from the body?"
"The Egyptians would doubtless think erroneously," said the
astronomer, "in the darkness of heathenism and the first dawn of
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