| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: that of the pendulum, and he fell asleep with that confused and
indistinct perception.
["Do you want some water, Monsieur Taillefer?" said the master of the
house, observing that the banker was mechanically pouring from an
empty decanter.
Monsieur Hermann continued his narrative after the slight pause
occasioned by this interruption.]
The next morning Prosper Magnan was awakened by a great noise. He
seemed to hear piercing cries, and he felt that violent shuddering of
the nerves which we suffer when on awaking we continue to feel a
painful impression begun in sleep. A physiological fact then takes
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: careful not to pejorate the same by words which glance upon the purity
of justice. Justice, in this country, and in my poor hands, is no
respecter of persons."
"You give me too great a share in my own speech, my lord," said I. "I
did but repeat the common talk of the country, which I have heard
everywhere, and from men of all opinions as I came along."
"When you are come to more discretion you will understand such talk in
not to be listened to, how much less repeated," says the Advocate.
"But I acquit you of an ill intention. That nobleman, whom we all
honour, and who has indeed been wounded in a near place by the late
barbarity, sits too high to be reached by these aspersions. The Duke
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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 Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: tents and drying frames, rose the voices of the fisher folk.
Bucks skylarked with bucks or flirted with the maidens, while the
older squaws, shut out from this by virtue of having fulfilled the
end of their existence in reproduction, gossiped as they braided
rope from the green roots of trailing vines. At their feet their
naked progeny played and squabbled, or rolled in the muck with the
tawny wolf-dogs.
To one side of the encampment, and conspicuously apart from it,
stood a second camp of two tents. But it was a white man's camp.
If nothing else, the choice of position at least bore convincing
evidence of this. In case of offence, it commanded the Indian
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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 Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: wrote rapidly, and then took a turn around the room, frowning as he
walked. "The actuality of a thing," said he, summing his clever
thoughts up, "is not disproved by its being inconceivable. Ideas alone
depend upon thought for their existence. There! Anybody can get off
stuff like that by the yard." He picked up a cork and a foot-rule,
tossed the cork, and sent it flying out of the window with the
foot-rule.
"Skip Berkeley," said the other boy.
"How much more is there?"
"Necessary and accidental truths," answered the tutor, reading the
subjects from his notes. "Hume and the causal law. The duality, or
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