| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: Harran showed Osterman and Annixter where they were to sleep, in
adjoining rooms. Magnus soon afterward retired.
Osterman found an excuse for going to bed, but Annixter and
Harran remained in the latter's room, in a haze of blue tobacco
smoke, talking, talking. But at length, at the end of all
argument, Annixter got up, remarking:
"Well, I'm going to turn in. It's nearly two o'clock."
He went to his room, closing the door, and Harran, opening his
window to clear out the tobacco smoke, looked out for a moment
across the country toward the south.
The darkness was profound, impenetrable; the rain fell with an
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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 Mayflower Compact: the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country,
a Voyage to plant the first colony in the Northerne Parts
of Virginia; doe, by these Presents, solemnly and mutually
in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and
combine ourselves together into a civill Body Politick,
for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance
of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof do enact,
constitute, and frame, such just and equall Laws, Ordinances,
Acts, Constitutions, and Offices, from time to time,
as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the
Generall Good of the Colonie; unto which we promise
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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 Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: "He's like that all the time," said Turgénieff,
smiling; "ever since he got back from his battery at
Sebastopol,² and came to stay here, he has been going the
pace. Orgies, Gipsies, and gambling all night long, and then
sleeps like a dead man till two o'clock in the afternoon. I did my
best to stop him, but have given it up as a bad job.
"It was in this visit to St. Petersburg that I and Tolstoy
became acquainted, but the acquaintance was of a purely formal
character, as I had not yet seen a line of his writings, and had
never heard of his name in literature, except that
Turgénieff mentioned his 'Stories of Childhood.'"
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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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: glare and a grin: "Oh ghosts - of course the place must swarm with
them! I should be ashamed of it if it didn't. Poor Mrs. Muldoon's
right, and it's why I haven't asked her to do more than look in."
Miss Staverton's gaze again lost itself, and things she didn't
utter, it was clear, came and went in her mind. She might even for
the minute, off there in the fine room, have imagined some element
dimly gathering. Simplified like the death-mask of a handsome
face, it perhaps produced for her just then an effect akin to the
stir of an expression in the "set" commemorative plaster. Yet
whatever her impression may have been she produced instead a vague
platitude. "Well, if it were only furnished and lived in - !"
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