| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: the essence of his position - sightless, and his only recourse then
was in abrupt turns, rapid recoveries of ground. He wheeled about,
retracing his steps, as if he might so catch in his face at least
the stirred air of some other quick revolution. It was indeed true
that his fully dislocalised thought of these manoeuvres recalled to
him Pantaloon, at the Christmas farce, buffeted and tricked from
behind by ubiquitous Harlequin; but it left intact the influence of
the conditions themselves each time he was re-exposed to them, so
that in fact this association, had he suffered it to become
constant, would on a certain side have but ministered to his
intenser gravity. He had made, as I have said, to create on the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: He stood looking about himself for a while, and then off he
started homeward, staggering and stumbling and shuffling, for the
wine that he had drank made him so light-headed that all the
world spun topsy-turvy around him.
His way led along by the river, and on he went stumbling and
staggering. All of a sudden--plump! splash!--he was in the water
over head and ears. Up he came, spitting out the water and
shouting for help, splashing and sputtering, and kicking and
swimming, knowing no more where he was than the man in the moon.
Sometimes his head was under water and sometimes it was up again.
At last, just as his strength was failing him, his feet struck
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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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: styles, agreeably to their different ages, would have caused
noblemen to have fallen down and worshiped. My mother, who had
never yet met with any flagrant insult on account of her national
distinctions, was too much shocked to be capable of speaking. I
whispered to her a few words, recalling her to her native dignity
of mind, paid the money, and we drove to the prison. But the hour
was past at which we could be admitted, and, as Jewesses, my mother
and sisters could not be allowed to stay in the city; they were to
go into the Jewish quarter, a part of the suburb set apart for
Jews, in which it was scarcely possible to obtain a lodging
tolerably clean. My father, on the next day, we found, to our
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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 Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: persuaded that he had a considerable hand in bringing the war to
a happy termination.
But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and
apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary
treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best
in these sheltered, long settled retreats; but are trampled under
foot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of
our country places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts
in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to
finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves,
before their surviving friends have travelled away from the
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
