| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: chapel of Yale University he found skeletons of horses no bigger
than a fox, bedded in the rocks, and he said they were ancestors of
my father. My mother heard him say it; and he said those skeletons
were two million years old, which astonished her and made her
Kentucky pretensions look small and pretty antiphonal, not to say
oblique. Let me see. . . . I used to know the meaning of those
words, but . . . well, it was years ago, and 'tisn't as vivid now
as it was when they were fresh. That sort of words doesn't keep,
in the kind of climate we have out here. Professor Marsh said
those skeletons were fossils. So that makes me part blue grass and
part fossil; if there is any older or better stock, you will have
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: greeted her as "Duchesse" and was greeted in turn, while talk
started in French, as "Ma toute-belle"; little facts that had
their due, their vivid interest for Strether. Madame de Vionnet
didn't, none the less, introduce him--a note he was conscious of
as false to the Woollett scale and the Woollett humanity; though
it didn't prevent the Duchess, who struck him as confident and
free, very much what he had obscurely supposed duchesses, from
looking at him as straight and as hard--for it WAS hard--as if she
would have liked, all the same, to know him. "Oh yes, my dear,
it's all right, it's ME; and who are YOU, with your interesting
wrinkles and your most effective (is it the handsomest, is it the
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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 Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: that all the world might well bow before the Master Woodsman and honor
his name forever!
It is well known that when the great Ak once undertakes to do a
thing he never hesitates an instant. Now he summoned his fleetest
messengers, and sent them in a flash to many parts of the earth.
And when they were gone he turned to the anxious Necile and
comforted her, saying:
"Be of good heart, my child; our friend still lives. And now run to
your Queen and tell her that I have summoned a council of all the
immortals of the world to meet with me here in Burzee this night. If
they obey, and harken unto my words, Claus will drive his reindeer for
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus |
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 Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis.
Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her
malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the
closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she
succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible
agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I
learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
probably be the last I should obtain--that the lady, at least
while living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either
Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest
The Fall of the House of Usher |
