| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: moral of it some day. Bah! only ten months married! Too soon, you will
admit, to give up hope.
We are leading a gay, yet far from empty life, as is the way with
happy people. The days are never long enough for us. Society, seeing
me in the trappings of a married woman, pronounces the Baronne de
Macumer much prettier than Louise de Chaulieu: a happy love is a most
becoming cosmetic. When Felipe and I drive along the Champs-Elysees in
the bright sunshine of a crisp January day, beneath the trees, frosted
with clusters of white stars, and face all Paris on the spot where
last year we met with a gulf between us, the contrast calls up a
thousand fancies. Suppose, after all, your last letter should be right
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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 Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: gentlemen were coming towards her across the Atlantic whose
minds, it chanced, were very busily occupied by her affairs.
One of these was her father, who was lying in his brass bed
in his commodious cabin on the Hollandia, regretting his
diminishing ability to sleep in the early morning now, even
when he was in the strong and soothing air of mid-Atlantic,
and thinking of V.V. because she had a way of coming into his
mind when it was undefended; and the other was Mr. Gunter
Lake on the Megantic, one day out from Sandy Hook, who found
himself equally sleepless and preoccupied. And although Mr.
Lake was a man of vast activities and complicated engagements
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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 Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: discovered.
On mental tests he did better than we expected. To be sure he
was very backward in arithmetic, but then his story was that he
had hardly ever been to school at all. He certainly did well in
many of our tests with concrete material, but the results as a
whole were curiously irregular, even if we allowed for his
deficient schooling. At that time we were disinclined to pass
ultimate judgment on his mentality without knowing more about his
antecedents.
On the ``Aussage'' Test he gave only 11 bare items on free
recital. On questioning 19 more details were added. Of the
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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 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: "But what time o' day?"
"In the evenin' -- 'bout an hour er two before sun-
down."
"HOW'D you come?"
"I come down on the Susan Powell from Cincin-
nati."
"Well, then, how'd you come to be up at the Pint
in the MORNIN' -- in a canoe?"
"I warn't up at the Pint in the mornin'."
"It's a lie."
Several of them jumped for him and begged him not
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
