| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: The sledge, shortening this route, took a chord of the arc
described by the railway. Mudge was not afraid of being stopped
by the Platte River, because it was frozen. The road, then, was quite
clear of obstacles, and Phileas Fogg had but two things to fear--
an accident to the sledge, and a change or calm in the wind.
But the breeze, far from lessening its force, blew as if to
bend the mast, which, however, the metallic lashings held firmly.
These lashings, like the chords of a stringed instrument,
resounded as if vibrated by a violin bow. The sledge slid along
in the midst of a plaintively intense melody.
"Those chords give the fifth and the octave," said Mr. Fogg.
Around the World in 80 Days |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: stripling, attending the school of oratory and practising the art
yourself, what did you ever imagine you lacked? And when you were
a young man, entered upon public life, and were pleading causes
and making a name, who any longer seemed equal to you? And at
what moment would you have endured another examining your
principles and proving that they were unsound? What then am I to
say to you? "Help me in this matter!" you cry. Ah, for that I
have no rule! And neither did you, if that was your object, come
to me as a philosopher, but as you might have gone to a herb-seller
or a cobbler.--"What do philosophers have rules for,
then?"--Why, that whatever may betide, our ruling faculty may be
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: Penny's penny prices!
Come buy, come try, come
buy!"
The poster really was most
'ticing.
There was a rush upon the
opening day. The shop was
crammed with customers,
and there were crowds of
mice upon the biscuit cannisters.
Sally Henny Penny gets
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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 Altar of the Dead by Henry James: suddenly into vivid usefulness, with a quiet elderly man, for whom
it evidently had a fascination, often seated there in a maze or a
doze; but half the satisfaction of the spot for this mysterious and
fitful worshipper was that he found the years of his life there,
and the ties, the affections, the struggles, the submissions, the
conquests, if there had been such, a record of that adventurous
journey in which the beginnings and the endings of human relations
are the lettered mile-stones. He had in general little taste for
the past as a part of his own history; at other times and in other
places it mostly seemed to him pitiful to consider and impossible
to repair; but on these occasions he accepted it with something of
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