| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: alone knows the number of those who are parricides in thought.
Picture to yourself the state of mind of a man who must pay a
life annuity to some old woman whom he scarcely knows; both live
in the country with a brook between them, both sides are free to
hate cordially, without offending against the social conventions
that require two brothers to wear a mask if the older will
succeed to the entail, and the other to the fortune of a younger
son. The whole civilization of Europe turns upon the principle of
hereditary succession as upon a pivot; it would be madness to
subvert the principle; but could we not, in an age that prides
itself upon its mechanical inventions, perfect this essential
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: trousers heavy with rain; a rough-looking, middle-aged man,
poorly dressed like a shepherd, wet as Smilash, with the
expression, piteous, patient, and desperate, of one hard driven
by ill-fortune, and at the end of his resources; two little
children, a boy and a girl, almost naked, cowering under an old
sack that had served them as an umbrella; and, lying on the
settee where the two men had laid it, a heap of wretched wearing
apparel, sacking, and rotten matting, with Smilash's coat and
sou'wester, the whole covering a bundle which presently proved to
be an exhausted woman with a tiny infant at her breast. Smilash's
expression, as he looked at her, was ferocious.
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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 Altar of the Dead by Henry James: point, she adored her very wounds. The passion by which he had
profited had rushed back after its ebb, and now the tide of
tenderness, arrested for ever at flood, was too deep even to
fathom. Stransom sincerely considered that he had forgiven him;
but how little he had achieved the miracle that she had achieved!
His forgiveness was silence, but hers was mere unuttered sound.
The light she had demanded for his altar would have broken his
silence with a blare; whereas all the lights in the church were for
her too great a hush.
She had been right about the difference - she had spoken the truth
about the change: Stransom was soon to know himself as perversely
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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 Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: finish school, and take up a profession or a busi-
ness, before you say anything definite. You would
want a nice home for the dear little thing, you
know that, Jim."
Jim stared at his mother out of his white pillow.
"I thought I would stay with you, and she would
stay with her father until we were both very much
older," said he. "She has a nice home now, you
know, mother."
Sally Patterson's mouth twitched a little, but she
spoke quite gravely and reasonably. "Yes, that is
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