| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Halt here and there in sweet and sunny dales,
But halt not overlong;
The time one rural song to sing
They pause; then following bounteous gales
Steer forward on the wing:
Sun-servers they, from first to last,
Upon the sun they wait
To ride the sailing blast.
So he awhile in our contested state,
Awhile abode, not longer, for his Sun -
Mother we say, no tenderer name we know -
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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 Octopus by Frank Norris: the stable-man, and Dyke himself, darting hither and thither
about the yellow mare, buckling, strapping, cinching, their lips
pale, their fingers trembling with excitement.
"Want anything to eat?" Annixter's head was under the saddle flap
as he tore at the cinch. "Want anything to eat? Want any money?
Want a gun?"
"Water," returned Dyke. "They've watched every spring. I'm
killed with thirst."
"There's the hydrant. Quick now."
"I got as far as the Kern River, but they turned me back," he
said between breaths as he drank.
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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 From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: undertake it here, and which takes up this whole county, which is
the largest and most populous in England, Yorkshire excepted (which
ought to be esteemed three counties, and is, indeed, divided as
such into the East, West, and North Riding). But Devonshire, one
entire county, is so full of great towns, and those towns so full
of people, and those people so universally employed in trade and
manufactures, that not only it cannot be equalled in England, but
perhaps not in Europe.
In my travel through Dorsetshire I ought to have observed that the
biggest towns in that county sent no members to Parliament, and
that the smallest did--that is to say that Sherborne, Blandford,
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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 Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: That all my powers of thought were spent."
A little whisper inly slid,
"Yet truth is truth: you know you did."
A little wink beneath the lid.
And, sickened with excess of dread,
Prone to the dust he bent his head,
And lay like one three-quarters dead
The whisper left him - like a breeze
Lost in the depths of leafy trees -
Left him by no means at his ease.
Once more he weltered in despair,
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