| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: face with burnt cork and put the cork in his pocket.
His plan was to slip down to his uncle's private sitting room below,
pass into the bedroom, steal the safe key from the old gentleman's
clothes, and then go back and rob the safe. He took up his
candle to start. His courage and confidence were high,
up to this point, but both began to waver a little now.
Suppose he should make a noise, by some accident, and get caught--
say, in the act of opening the safe? Perhaps it would be well to go armed.
He took the Indian knife from its hiding place, and felt
a pleasant return of his wandering courage. He slipped
stealthily down the narrow stair, his hair rising and his pulses
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: had not waited either for thanks or
for the washing bill!
She was running running running
up the hill--and where was her white
frilled cap? and her shawl? and her
gown-and her petticoat?
And HOW small she had grown--
and HOW brown--and covered with
PRICKLES!
Why! Mrs. Tiggy-winkle was
nothing but a HEDGEHOG!
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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 Cratylus by Plato: intermediate links, and so the better half of the evidence of the change is
wanting.
(3) Among the incumbrances or illusions of language may be reckoned many
of the rules and traditions of grammar, whether ancient grammar or the
corrections of it which modern philology has introduced. Grammar, like
law, delights in definition: human speech, like human action, though very
far from being a mere chaos, is indefinite, admits of degrees, and is
always in a state of change or transition. Grammar gives an erroneous
conception of language: for it reduces to a system that which is not a
system. Its figures of speech, pleonasms, ellipses, anacolutha, pros to
semainomenon, and the like have no reality; they do not either make
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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 Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: house, were to enquire if he were at home, meaning to slay only him and no
one else:--the servants reply, 'Yes': (Mind, I do not mean that you would
really do such a thing; but there is nothing, you think, to prevent a man
who is ignorant of the best, having occasionally the whim that what is
worst is best?
ALCIBIADES: No.)
SOCRATES:--If, then, you went indoors, and seeing him, did not know him,
but thought that he was some one else, would you venture to slay him?
ALCIBIADES: Most decidedly not (it seems to me). (These words are omitted
in several MSS.)
SOCRATES: For you designed to kill, not the first who offered, but
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