| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: of home manufacture and my own bonnet, and started for church. I
had walked but a few paces when the consciousness of being *free*
and *alone* struck me. I halted, looked about me, and concluded
that I would not go to church, but walk into the fields. I had no
knowledge of the whereabouts of the fields; but I walked straight
forward, and after a while came upon some barren fields, cropping
with coarse rocks, along which ran a narrow road. I turned into it,
and soon saw beyond the rough coast the blue ring of the ocean--
vast, silent, and splendid in the sunshine. I found a seat on the
ruins of an old stone-wall, among some tangled bushes and briers.
There being no Aunt Eliza to pull through the surf, and no animated
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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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: The tangled, woody, and almost trackless foot-hills that
enclose the valley, shutting it off from Sonoma on the west,
and from Yolo on the east - rough as they were in outline,
dug out by winter streams, crowned by cliffy bluffs and
nodding pine trees - wore dwarfed into satellites by the bulk
and bearing of Mount Saint Helena. She over-towered them by
two-thirds of her own stature. She excelled them by the
boldness of her profile. Her great bald summit, clear of
trees and pasture, a cairn of quartz and cinnabar, rejected
kinship with the dark and shaggy wilderness of lesser hill-
tops.
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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 A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: were appointed to convoy the northern fleet. I was in the
admiral's. We arrived at Goa in some vessels bound for Camberia:
here we lost a good old Abyssin convert, a man much valued in his
order, and who was actually prior of his convent when he left
Abyssinia, choosing rather to forsake all for religion than to leave
the way of salvation, which God had so mercifully favoured him with
the knowledge of.
We continued our voyage, and almost without stopping sailed by
Surate and Damam, where the rector of the college came to see us,
but so sea-sick that the interview was without any satisfaction on
either side. Then landing at Bazaim we were received by our fathers
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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 Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: than anything else. A.M.)
This morning as ever was, bright and early up came the whole
gang of them, a lot of sturdy, common-looking lads they
seemed to be for the most part, and fell to on my new road.
Old Poe was in the highest of good spirits, and looked better
in health than he has done any time in two years, being
positively rejuvenated by the success of his scheme. He
jested as he served out the new tools, and I am sorry to say
damned the Government up hill and down dale, probably with a
view to show off his position as a friend of the family
before his work-boys. Now, whether or not their impulse will
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