| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: backward. I came into a sitting position, crawled away from the edge for a
space on all fours, then staggered up and ran after him across the
thundering, quivering sheet of metal. It seemed to be swinging open with a
steadily accelerated velocity, and the bushes in front of me shifted
sideways as I ran.
I was none too soon. Cavor's back vanished amidst the bristling thicket,
and as I scrambled up after him, the monstrous valve came into its
position with a clang. For a long time we lay panting, not daring to
approach the pit.
But at last very cautiously and bit by bit we crept into a position from
which we could peer down. The bushes about us creaked and waved with the
The First Men In The Moon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: without visible process. The instant the wind shifted, the
rain broke forth, filling the air in a moment with its volume,
and cutting so sharply that it seemed like hail, though no
hailstones reached the ground. At the same time there rose upon
the water a dense white film, which seemed to grow together
from a hundred different directions, and was made partly of
rain, and partly of the blown edges of the spray. There was but
a glimpse of this; for in a few moments it was impossible to
see two rods; but when the first gust was over, the water
showed itself again, the jets of spray all beaten down, and
regular waves, of dull lead-color, breaking higher on the
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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 Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: not to be allowed to go, to disappear into the free, happy world of
irresponsible individuals. She must be made to realize--to feel.
"I don't quite see," she said, as if Katharine had challenged her
explicitly, "how, things being as they are, any one can help trying,
at least, to do something."
"No. But how ARE things?"
Mary pressed her lips, and smiled ironically; she had Katharine at her
mercy; she could, if she liked, discharge upon her head wagon-loads of
revolting proof of the state of things ignored by the casual, the
amateur, the looker-on, the cynical observer of life at a distance.
And yet she hesitated. As usual, when she found herself in talk with
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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 Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: at the border, and he regarded England as a perilous, unhomely
land. When the Black Watch, after years of foreign service,
returned to Scotland, veterans leaped out and kissed the earth at
Port Patrick. They had been in Ireland, stationed among men of
their own race and language, where they were well liked and treated
with affection; but it was the soil of Galloway that they kissed at
the extreme end of the hostile lowlands, among a people who did not
understand their speech, and who had hated, harried, and hanged
them since the dawn of history. Last, and perhaps most curious,
the sons of chieftains were often educated on the continent of
Europe. They went abroad speaking Gaelic; they returned speaking,
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