| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: Down with our ebb of life decreasing glide. FRANCIS.
BAXTER, in the narrative of his own life, has
enumerated several opinions, which, though he
thought them evident and incontestable at his first
entrance into the world, time and experience
disposed him to change.
Whoever reviews the state of his own mind from
the dawn of manhood to its decline, and considers
what he pursued or dreaded, slighted or esteemed,
at different periods of his age, will have no reason
to imagine such changes of sentiment peculiar to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
If I might teach thee wit, better it were,
Though not to love, yet, love to tell me so;--
As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,
No news but health from their physicians know;--
For, if I should despair, I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee;
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.
That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
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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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: through which we entered by our bridge of flying plank - was
still entire, a handsome, panelled door, the most finished
piece of carpentry in Silverado. And the two lowest bunks
next to this we roughly filled with hay for that night's use.
Through the opposite, or eastern-looking gable, with its open
door and window, a faint, disused starshine came into the
room like mist; and when we were once in bed, we lay,
awaiting sleep, in a haunted, incomplete obscurity. At first
the silence of the night was utter. Then a high wind began
in the distance among the tree-tops, and for hours continued
to grow higher. It seemed to me much such a wind as we had
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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 Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War by Frederick A. Talbot: similar conditions. More than one bold and skilful aviator has
essayed the crossing of the English Channel and, being overtaken
by fog, has failed to make the opposite coast. His compass has
given him the proper direction, but the side-drift has proved his
undoing, with the result that he has missed his objective.
The fickle character of the winds over the water, especially over
such expanses as the North Sea, constitutes another and seriously
adverse factor. Storms, squalls, gales, and, in winter,
blizzards, spring up with magical suddenness, and are so severe
that no aircraft could hope to live in them. But such
visitations are more to be dreaded by the lighter-than-air than
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