| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: forest. A little while after, his friends heard a loud
explosion; the mountain echoes bellowed, and then all was
still. On examination, the can proved to contain oil, with
the trifling addition of nitro-glycerine; but no research
disclosed a trace of either man or lantern.
It was a pretty sight, after this anecdote, to see us
sweeping out the giant powder. It seemed never to be far
enough away. And, after all, it was only some rock pounded
for assay.
So much for the lower room. We scraped some of the rougher
dirt off the floor, and left it. That was our sitting-room
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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 Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: ever swaying; farther on, the weeping willows drooped their pale
foliage between the stout, round-headed walnuts. This belt of trees
enabled the occupants of the house to go down at all hours to the
river-bank fearless of the rays of the sun.
The facade of the house, before which lay the yellow ribbon of a
gravelled terrace, was shaded by a wooden gallery, around which
climbing plants were twining, and tossing in this month of May their
various blossoms into the very windows of the second floor. Without
being really vast, this garden seemed immense from the manner in which
its vistas were cut; points of view, cleverly contrived through the
rise and fall of the ground, married themselves, as it were, to those
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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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: of making him hear what he had said just as she had heard it. He
easily enough felt that it gave him away, but what in truth had
everything done but that? It had been all very well to think at
moments that he was holding her nose down and that he had coerced
her: what had he by this time done but let her practically see that
he accepted their relation? What was their relation moreover--
though light and brief enough in form as yet--but whatever she
might choose to make it? Nothing could prevent her--certainly he
couldn't--from making it pleasant. At the back of his head, behind
everything, was the sense that she was--there, before him, close to
him, in vivid imperative form--one of the rare women he had so
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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 Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: And have as just a title to her beauty
As any Palamon or any living
That is a mans Sonne.
PALAMON.
Have I cald thee friend?
ARCITE.
Yes, and have found me so; why are you mov'd thus?
Let me deale coldly with you: am not I
Part of your blood, part of your soule? you have told me
That I was Palamon, and you were Arcite.
PALAMON.
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