| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: dinner, the door-bell had rung, and a lady so thickly
veiled that the servants did not immediately recognise
her had asked to be received.
The butler, hearing a familiar voice, had thrown
open the sitting-room door, announcing: "Mrs. Julius
Beaufort"--and had then closed it again on the two
ladies. They must have been together, he thought, about
an hour. When Mrs. Mingott's bell rang Mrs. Beaufort
had already slipped away unseen, and the old lady,
white and vast and terrible, sat alone in her great chair,
and signed to the butler to help her into her room. She
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: of situation, and to which was added all the most exquisite
contrivances which the best heads could invent to make it
artificially as well as naturally pleasant.
However, the fate of the Radnor family so directing, it was bought
with the whole estate about it by the late Duke of Newcastle, in a
partition of whose immense estate it fell to the Right Honourable
the Lord Harley, son and heir-apparent of the present Earl of
Oxford and Mortimer, in right of the Lady Harriet Cavendish, only
daughter of the said Duke of Newcastle, who is married to his
lordship, and brought him this estate and many other, sufficient to
denominate her the richest heiress in Great Britain.
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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 Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: incontestable superiority, warrants. But as soon as the young
American approaches manhood, the ties of filial obedience are
relaxed day by day: master of his thoughts, he is soon master of
his conduct. In America there is, strictly speaking, no
adolescence: at the close of boyhood the man appears, and begins
to trace out his own path. It would be an error to suppose that
this is preceded by a domestic struggle, in which the son has
obtained by a sort of moral violence the liberty that his father
refused him. The same habits, the same principles which impel the
one to assert his independence, predispose the other to consider
the use of that independence as an incontestable right. 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 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: building, holding me like a baby in one of his forepaws, and
feeding me with the other, by cramming into my mouth some
victuals he had squeezed out of the bag on one side of his chaps,
and patting me when I would not eat; whereat many of the rabble
below could not forbear laughing; neither do I think they justly
ought to be blamed, for, without question, the sight was
ridiculous enough to every body but myself. Some of the people
threw up stones, hoping to drive the monkey down; but this was
strictly forbidden, or else, very probably, my brains had been
dashed out.
The ladders were now applied, and mounted by several men; which
Gulliver's Travels |
