| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: perplexing. I never knew one to be so long getting its growth.
It has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly
like our hair, except that it is much finer and softer, and instead
of being black is red. I am like to lose my mind over the capricious
and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak.
If I could catch another one--but that is hopeless; it is a new
variety, and the only sample; this is plain. But I caught a true
kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome,
would rather have that for company than have no kin at all, or any
animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy from in its
forlorn condition here among strangers who do not know its ways
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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 Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: She found nothing that she cared for after all. The garments that
looked chic in the windows or on manikins in the shops, were
absurd on her. Her insistent bosom bulged, straight lines became
curves or tortuous zigzags, plackets gaped, collars choked her or
shocked her by their absence. In the mirror of Marie Jedlicka,
clad in familiar garments that had accommodated themselves to the
idiosyncrasies of her figure, Mrs. Boyer was a plump, rather
comely matron. Here before the plate glass of the modiste, under
the glare of a hundred lights, side by side with a slim Austrian
girl who looked like a willow wand, Mrs. Boyer was grotesque,
ridiculous, monstrous. She shuddered. She almost wept.
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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 Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: was tuckered out and went to sleep and had nightmares,
a million of them. But before dawn we was awake again,
because meantime a storm had come up and been raging,
and the thunder and lightning was awful, and the wind was
a-thrashing the trees around, and the rain was driving down
in slanting sheets, and the gullies was running rivers.
Tom says:
"Looky here, Huck, I'll tell you one thing that's
mighty curious. Up to the time we went out last night
the family hadn't heard about Jake Dunlap being murdered.
Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and Bud Dixon away
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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 Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: settled his accounts with Frappier and bade him farewell. The heroism
with which the poor lad personally performed, like the grandmother,
the last offices for Pierrette made him a sharer in the awful scene
which crowned the tyranny of the Rogrons.
Brigaut and the plumber reached the house of Monsieur Auffray just in
time to decide by their own main force an infamous and shocking
judicial question. The room where the dead girl lay was full of
people, and presented to the eyes of the two men a singular sight. The
Rogron emissaries were standing beside the body of their victim, to
torture her even after death. The corpse of the child, solemn in its
beauty, lay on the cot-bed of her grandmother. Pierrette's eyes were
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