| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: Thursday," she gasped. Then she was gone, trundling the baby-
carriage with incredible speed.
"But, Eudora --"
"I must go," she called back, faintly. The man stood staring
after the hurrying figure with its swishing black skirts and its
flying points of rich India shawl, and he smiled happily and
tenderly. That evening at the inn his caller, a young fellow
just married and beaming with happiness, saw an answering beam in
the older man's face. He broke off in the midst of a sentence
and stared at him.
"Don't give me away until I tell you to, Ned," he said, "but I
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: me, that he was Witness to their Public Murder at the
GALLOWLEE, between LEITH and EDINBURGH, when he saw the
Hangman hash and hagg off all their Five Heads, with
PATRICK FOREMAN'S Right Hand: Their Bodies were all
buried at the Gallows Foot; their Heads, with PATRICK'S
Hand, were brought and put upon five Pikes on the
PLEASAUNCE-PORT. . . . Mr. RENWICK told me also that it
was the first public Action that his Hand was at, to
conveen Friends, and lift their murthered Bodies, and
carried them to the West Churchyard of EDINBURGH,' - not
Greyfriars, this time, - 'and buried them there. Then
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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 Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: the other buildings, and so mantled with a dense growth of aged
ivy as to stand a shaft of solid green. Above its crumbling crown
circled hundreds of pigeons, white and pied, clapping and
clattering in noisy flight through the sunny air. Several
windows, some closed with shutters, peeped here and there from
out the leaves, and near the top of the pile was a row of arched
openings, as though of a balcony or an airy gallery.
Myles had more than once felt an idle curiosity about this tower,
and one day, as he and Gascoyne sat together, he pointed his
finger and said, "What is yon place?"
"That," answered Gascoyne, looking over his shoulder--"that they
Men of Iron |
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 A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: the clannishness that will make a dozen brothers and sisters who
quarrel furiously among themselves close up their ranks and make
common cause against a brother-in-law or a sister-in-law. And there
is a strong sense of property in children, which often makes mothers
and fathers bitterly jealous of allowing anyone else to interfere with
their children, whom they may none the less treat very badly. And
there is an extremely dangerous craze for children which leads certain
people to establish orphanages and baby farms and schools, seizing any
pretext for filling their houses with children exactly as some
eccentric old ladies and gentlemen fill theirs with cats. In such
places the children are the victims of all the caprices of doting
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