| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: hours put on, in that belated vision--for he scarce went to bed
till morning--the aspect that is most to our purpose.
He then knew more or less how he had been affected--he but half
knew at the time. There had been plenty to affect him even after,
as has been said, they had shaken down; for his consciousness,
though muffled, had its sharpest moments during this passage, a
marked drop into innocent friendly Bohemia. They then had put
their elbows on the table, deploring the premature end of their two
or three dishes; which they had tried to make up with another
bottle while Chad joked a little spasmodically, perhaps even a
little irrelevantly, with the hostess. What it all came to had
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: preserving the effect of the Greek is increased by the want of adversative
and inferential particles in English, and by the nice sense of tautology
which characterizes all modern languages. We cannot have two 'buts' or two
'fors' in the same sentence where the Greek repeats (Greek). There is a
similar want of particles expressing the various gradations of objective
and subjective thought--(Greek) and the like, which are so thickly
scattered over the Greek page. Further, we can only realize to a very
imperfect degree the common distinction between (Greek), and the
combination of the two suggests a subtle shade of negation which cannot be
expressed in English. And while English is more dependent than Greek upon
the apposition of clauses and sentences, yet there is a difficulty in using
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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 Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White: could see. There was only two packed, and no wagon. I suppose
the whole outfit--pots, pans, and kettles--was worth five
dollars. It was just supper when I run across them, and it
didn't take more'n one look to discover that flour, coffee,
sugar, and salt was all they carried. A yearlin' carcass,
half-skinned, lay near, and the fry-pan was, full of meat.
"Howdy, strangers," says I, ridin' up.
They nodded a little, but didn't say nothin'. My hosses fell to
grazin', and I eased myself around in my saddle, and made a
cigareet. The men was tall, lank fellows, with kind of sullen
faces, and sly, shifty eyes; the woman was dirty and generally
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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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: regulators who opposed Governor Tryon. Not through any such cattle could
you be one of us," said my Aunt.
But a dim, distant, hitherto uncharted Henry Tudor Fanning had fought in
some of the early Indian wars, and the last of his known blood was
reported to have fallen while fighting bravely at the battle of Cowpens.
In him my hope lay. Records of Tarleton, records of Marion's men, these
were what I must search, and for these I had best go to Kings Port. If I
returned with Kinship proven, then I might be a Selected Salic Scion, a
chosen vessel, a royal seed, one in the most exalted circle of men and
women upon our coasts. The other qualifications were already mine:
ancestors colonial and bellicose upon land and sea--
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