| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: destined to have a speedy limit.
In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect
a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we
are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck
from the meadows, and deepens the soil--not that which trusts to
heating manures, and improved implements and modes of culture
only!
Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow
faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of
sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool's
allowance.
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: but pretended not to know; and Mrs. Finn once
told her plainly that 'this man, my dear, will do
you some harm some day yet.' And so it went on.
They could be seen on the roads, she tramping stol-
idly in her finery--grey dress, black feather, stout
boots, prominent white cotton gloves that caught
your eye a hundred yards away; and he, his coat
slung picturesquely over one shoulder, pacing by
her side, gallant of bearing and casting tender
glances upon the girl with the golden heart. I
wonder whether he saw how plain she was. Perhaps
Amy Foster |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: "I didn't know a thing, sir, not a thing. There couldn't have
been a fight or I would have heard it. But I don't know why I
didn't hear the shot."
"Why, then you must have been asleep after all, in spite of your
pain," said Muller with a smile, as he walked along beside the
man back to the place from which he had just come.
The old man shook his head. "No, I tell you I didn't close an
eye all night. I went to bed at half-past nine and I smoked two
pipes before I put out the light, and then I heard every hour
strike all night long and it wasn't until nearly five o'clock,
when it was almost dawn, that I dozed off a bit."
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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 Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: him, desired him to get up and save a life so necessary to the safety of
the commonwealth, which, at this time, would dearly want so great a
captain. But nothing could prevail upon him to accept of the offer; he
obliged young Lentulus, with tears in his eyes, to remount his horse;
then standing up, he gave him his hand, and commanded him to tell Fabius
Maximus that Aemilius Paulus had followed his directions to his very
last, and had not in the least deviated from those measures which were
agreed between them; but that it was his hard fate to be overpowered by
Varro in the first place, and secondly by Hannibal. Having dispatched
Lentulus with this commission, he marked where the slaughter was
greatest, and there threw himself upon the swords of the enemy. In this
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