| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: and Tom got cords of glory. The judge took the di'monds,
and stood up in his pulpit, and cleared his throat,
and shoved his spectacles back on his head, and says:
"I'll keep them and notify the owners; and when they
send for them it will be a real pleasure to me to hand
you the two thousand dollars, for you've earned the
money--yes, and you've earned the deepest and most
sincerest thanks of this community besides, for lifting
a wronged and innocent family out of ruin and shame,
and saving a good and honorable man from a felon's death,
and for exposing to infamy and the punishment of the law
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: high musings to offer to the new companion of her hearth. Every
one of her thoughts had hitherto turned to Evelina and shaped
itself in homely easy words; of the mighty speech of silence she
knew not the earliest syllable.
Everything in the back room and the shop, on the second day
after Evelina's going, seemed to have grown coldly unfamiliar. The
whole aspect of the place had changed with the changed conditions
of Ann Eliza's life. The first customer who opened the shop-door
startled her like a ghost; and all night she lay tossing on her
side of the bed, sinking now and then into an uncertain doze from
which she would suddenly wake to reach out her hand for Evelina.
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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 Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: perched on a hill, a Saxon town, where Alfred had gathered
his forces against the Danes and where Canute, who had ruled
over all Scandinavia and Iceland and Greenland, and had come
near ruling a patch of America, had died. It was a little
sleepy place now, looking out dreamily over beautiful views.
They would lunch in Shaftesbury and walk round it. Then they
would go in the afternoon through the pleasant west country
where the Celts had prevailed against the old folk of the
Stonehenge temple and the Romans against the Celts and the
Saxons against the Romanized Britons and the Danes against
the Saxons, a war-scarred landscape, abounding in dykes and
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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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: gallantry contributed much, no doubt, to draw a veil of melancholy
over a face where the charms and the vivacity of love must have shone
in earlier days. Obliged to repress the naive impulses and emotions of
a woman when she simply feels them instead of reflecting about them,
passion was still virgin in the depths of her heart. Her principal
attraction came, in fact, from this innate youth, which sometimes,
however, played her false, and gave to her ideas an innocent
expression of desire. Her manner and appearance commanded respect, but
there was always in her bearing, in her voice, a sort of looking
forward to some unknown future, as in girlhood. The most insensible
man would find himself in love with her, and yet be restrained by a
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