| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Is whiter even than her pretty hand:
She must prove true: for, brother, where two fight
The strongest wins, and truth and love are strength,
And you are happy: let her parents be.'
But Leolin cried out the more upon them--
Insolent, brainless, heartless! heiress, wealth,
Their wealth, their heiress! wealth enough was theirs
For twenty matches. Were he lord of this,
Why, twenty boys and girls should marry on it,
And forty blest ones bless him, and himself
Be wealthy still, ay wealthier. He believed
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: midsummer's night, so that in the morning he was found stricken
crazy, and from thenceforward, till the day he died, said only one
form of words; what they were in the original Gaelic I cannot tell,
but they were thus translated: 'Ah, the sweet singing out of the
sea.' Seals that haunted on that coast have been known to speak to
man in his own tongue, presaging great disasters. It was here that
a certain saint first landed on his voyage out of Ireland to
convert the Hebrideans. And, indeed, I think he had some claim to
be called saint; for, with the boats of that past age, to make so
rough a passage, and land on such a ticklish coast, was surely not
far short of the miraculous. It was to him, or to some of his
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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 Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic: established. Perhaps, she reasoned, it was quite as well that
Mrs. Colvin had gone, for if she could pull the candy herself, it
would save from two to three dollars a week.
Katy would not consent that she should do it alone, but agreed to
divide the labor between them. The quantity manufactured every
day was so great that the toil of making it fell heavily upon
them; but as Mrs. Redburn did not complain, Katy was too proud to
do so though her wrists and shoulders pained her severely every
night after the work was done.
This toil weighed heavily on Katy's rather feeble constitution;
but all her mother could say would not induce her to abandon the
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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 Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: of France, as their kings eldest sons are called: 'Tis here said,
he shall lament the loss of the Duke of Burgundy, called the
Bosse, which is an old English word for hump-shoulder, or
crook-back, as that Duke is known to be; and the prophecy seems
to mean, that he should be overcome or slain. By the green
berrys, in the next line, is meant the young Duke of Berry, the
Dauphin's third son, who shall not have valour or fortune enough
to supply the loss of his eldest brother.
Yonge Symnele, etc. By Symnele is meant the pretended Prince of
Wales, who, if he offers to attempt anything against England,
shall miscarry as he did before. Lambert Symnele is the name of a
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