| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: gone, there was more for everyone to eat. There was more leisure too,
inexperienced though the animals were. They met with many difficulties--for
instance, later in the year, when they harvested the corn, they had to
tread it out in the ancient style and blow away the chaff with their
breath, since the farm possessed no threshing machine--but the pigs with
their cleverness and Boxer with his tremendous muscles always pulled them
through. Boxer was the admiration of everybody. He had been a hard worker
even in Jones's time, but now he seemed more like three horses than one;
there were days when the entire work of the farm seemed to rest on his
mighty shoulders. From morning to night he was pushing and pulling, always
at the spot where the work was hardest. He had made an arrangement with
Animal Farm |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: difficulties are disposed of by the aid of the jury.]
The first difficulty is to procure the obedience of an
authority as entirely independent of the general laws of the
State as the township is. We have stated that assessors are
annually named by the town-meetings to levy the taxes. If a
township attempts to evade the payment of the taxes by neglecting
to name its assessors, the Court of Sessions condemns it to a
heavy penalty. *w The fine is levied on each of the inhabitants;
and the sheriff of the county, who is the officer of justice,
executes the mandate. Thus it is that in the United States the
authority of the Government is mysteriously concealed under the
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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 Aspern Papers by Henry James: nor chests with iron bands. Moreover it was possible, it was perhaps
even probable that the old lady had consigned her relics to her bedroom,
to some battered box that was shoved under the bed, to the drawer of some
lame dressing table, where they would be in the range of vision by the dim
night lamp. Nonetheless I scrutinized every article of furniture,
every conceivable cover for a hoard, and noticed that there were half
a dozen things with drawers, and in particular a tall old secretary,
with brass ornaments of the style of the Empire--a receptacle
somewhat rickety but still capable of keeping a great many secrets.
I don't know why this article fascinated me so, inasmuch as I certainly
had no definite purpose of breaking into it; but I stared at it so hard
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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 Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: way. Here were Dutch and English side by side; sixteen years ago
they had been at war together and now they wore the same uniform
and rode together, and laughed at him for a queer fellow because
he was for spitting at them and defying them, and folding his
arms and looking level at the executioners' rifles. There were to
be no executioners' rifles.... If it was so with Dutch and
English, why shouldn't it be so presently with French and
Germans? Why someday shouldn't French, German, Dutch and English,
Russian and Pole, ride together under this new star of mankind,
the Southern Cross, to catch whatever last mischief-maker was
left to poison the wells of goodwill?
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