| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: sure that the lobster, sole dependence of a late supper, was well
out of reach of the cat. There proved to be fine reserves of wild
raspberries and bread and butter, so that I regained my composure,
and waited impatiently for my own share of this illustrious visit
to begin. There was an instant sense of high festivity in
the evening air from the moment when our guest had so frankly
demanded the Oolong tea.
The great moment arrived. I was formally presented at the
stair-foot, and the two friends passed on to the kitchen, where I
soon heard a hospitable clink of crockery and the brisk stirring of
a tea-cup. I sat in my high-backed rocking-chair by the window in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: agents in the markets. For this reason, the farms of the Seine-et-
Oise, Seine-et-Marne, the Oise, the Eure-et-Loir, the Lower Seine, and
the Loiret are so desirable that capital cannot always be invested
there at one and a half per cent. Compared to the returns on estates
in Holland, England, and Belgium, this result is enormous. But at one
hundred miles from Paris an estate requires such variety of working,
its products are so different in kind, that it becomes a business,
with all the risks attendant on manufacturing. The wealthy owner is
really a merchant, forced to look for a market for his products, like
the owner of ironworks or cotton factories. He does not even escape
competition; the peasant, the small proprietor, is at his heels with
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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 Apology by Plato: therefore that I do believe in gods, and am not an entire atheist--this you
do not lay to my charge,--but only you say that they are not the same gods
which the city recognizes--the charge is that they are different gods. Or,
do you mean that I am an atheist simply, and a teacher of atheism?
I mean the latter--that you are a complete atheist.
What an extraordinary statement! Why do you think so, Meletus? Do you
mean that I do not believe in the godhead of the sun or moon, like other
men?
I assure you, judges, that he does not: for he says that the sun is stone,
and the moon earth.
Friend Meletus, you think that you are accusing Anaxagoras: and you have
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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 Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: measure of the perfection of his fulness. Now therefore as the
time of my departure is at the door, and seeing that my desire,
that hath grown with my growth and aged with my years, to be for
ever with Christ, is even now being fulfilled, thou must bury my
body in the earth and restore dust to dust, but thyself abide for
the time to come in this place, holding fast to thy spiritual
life, and making remembrance of me, poor as I am. For I fear
lest perchance the darksome army of fiends may stand in the way
of my soul, by reason of the multitude of mine ignorances.
"So do thou, my son, think no scorn of the laboriousness of thy
religious life, neither dread the length of the time, nor the
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