| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: with but by hard labour and constant application; particularly I
tried many ways to make myself a basket, but all the twigs I could
get for the purpose proved so brittle that they would do nothing.
It proved of excellent advantage to me now, that when I was a boy,
I used to take great delight in standing at a basket-maker's, in
the town where my father lived, to see them make their wicker-ware;
and being, as boys usually are, very officious to help, and a great
observer of the manner in which they worked those things, and
sometimes lending a hand, I had by these means full knowledge of
the methods of it, and I wanted nothing but the materials, when it
came into my mind that the twigs of that tree from whence I cut my
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: vehicle, her hands on her handle-bar. For the first time
Hoopdriver did not feel proud of his machine.
He turned and began to pick up the fallen fabric. He looked over
his shoulder, and she was gone, turned his head over the other
shoulder down the road, and she was riding off. "ORF!" said Mr.
Hoopdriver. "Well, I'm blowed!--Talk about Slap Up!" (His
aristocratic refinement rarely adorned his speech in his private
soliloquies.) His mind was whirling. One fact was clear. A most
delightful and novel human being had flashed across his horizon
and was going out of his life again. The Holiday madness was in
his blood. She looked round!
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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 La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: under the shade of green leaves with the two boys, who never wandered
from her now. Lessons had come to an end. Mother and children wished
to live the life of heart and heart together, with no disturbing
element, no outside cares. No tears now, no joyous outcries. The elder
boy, lying in the grass at his mother's side, basked in her eyes like
a lover and kissed her feet. Marie, the restless one, gathered flowers
for her, and brought them with a subdued look, standing on tiptoe to
put a girlish kiss on her lips. And the pale woman, with the great
tired eyes and languid movements, never uttered a word of complaint,
and smiled upon her children, so full of life and health--it was a
sublime picture, lacking no melancholy autumn pomp of yellow leaves
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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 Human Drift by Jack London: word from the officer; and heard the 'well done' of the mate, when
the yard reached the deck, with as much satisfaction as I ever
felt at Cambridge on seeing a 'bene' at the foot of a Latin
exercise."
"This was the first time I had taken a weather ear-ring, and I
felt not a little proud to sit astride of the weather yard-arm,
past the ear-ring, and sing out 'Haul out to leeward!'" He had
been over a year at sea before he essayed this able seaman's task,
but he did it, and he did it with pride. And with pride, he went
down a four-hundred foot cliff, on a pair of top-gallant studding-
sail halyards bent together, to dislodge several dollars worth of
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