| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: with a strange light in his eyes. He made a step towards her. "I
HAVE you,", he said. "You are mine. Netted--caught. But mine." He
would have gone up to her and laid his hand upon her, but he did
not dare to do that yet. "I have you in my hand," he said, "in my
power. Do you hear--POWER!"
She remained impassive. He stared at her for half a minute, and
then, with a superb gesture that was lost upon her, went to the
door. Surely the instinctive abasement of her sex before Strength
was upon his side. He told himself that his battle was won. She
heard the handle move and the catch click as the door closed
behind him.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: honor, Humann dressed Marcas, and, being an artist, turned him out as
a political personage ought to be dressed.
Juste lent Marcas two hundred francs in gold, the product of two
watches bought on credit, and pawned at the Mont-de-Piete. For my
part, I had said nothing of the six shirts and all necessary linen,
which cost me no more than the pleasure of asking for them from a
forewoman in a shop whom I had treated to Musard's during the
carnival.
Marcas accepted everything, thanking us no more than he ought. He only
inquired as to the means by which we had got possession of such
riches, and we made him laugh for the last time. We looked on our
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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 Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: We shake each other's hands, they each shake their own
hands. We take off our hats as a mark of respect, they
keep theirs on. We wear black for mourning, they wear
white. We wear our vests inside, they wear theirs outside.
A hundred other things more or less familiar to us all,
illustrate this rule. In some of their nursery rhymes everything
is said and done on the "cart before the horse" plan.
This is illustrated by a rhyme in which when the speaker
heard a disturbance outside his door he discovered it was
because a "dog had been bitten by a man." Of course,
he at once rushed to the rescue. He "took up the door
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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 The Cruise of the Jasper B. by Don Marquis: Jack London, poignards, bowie knives, Stanley Weyman, Captain
Marryat, and Dumas; sword canes, Scottish claymores, Cuban
machetes, Conan Doyle, Harrison Ainsworth, dress swords, and
Dumas; stilettos, daggers, hunting knives, Fenimore Cooper, G. P.
R. James, broadswords, Dumas; Gustave Aimard, Rudyard Kipling,
dueling swords, Dumas; F. Du Boisgobey, Malay krises, Walter
Scott, stick pistols, scimitars, Anthony Hope, single sticks,
foils, Dumas; jungles of arms, jumbles of books; arms of all
makes and periods; arms on the walls, in the corners, over the
fireplace, leaning against the bookshelves, lying in ambush under
the bed, peeping out of the wardrobe, propping the windows open,
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