| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: sedately unconscious of the men with a metropolitan seal upon their faces.
Crossing glittering avenues, she went into the throng emerging
from the places of forgetfulness. She hurried forward through the
crowd as if intent upon reaching a distant home, bending forward in
her handsome cloak, daintily lifting her skirts and picking for her
well-shod feet the dryer spots upon the pavements.
The restless doors of saloons, clashing to and fro, disclosed
animated rows of men before bars and hurrying barkeepers.
A concert hall gave to the street faint sounds of swift,
machine-like music, as if a group of phantom musicians were
hastening.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: of a British government, and fully proves, that nothing but Continental
authority can regulate Continental matters.
Another reason why the present time is preferable to all others, is,
that the fewer our numbers are, the more land there is yet unoccupied,
which instead of being lavished by the king on his worthless dependants,
may be hereafter applied, not only to the discharge of the present debt,
but to the constant support of government. No nation under heaven hath
such an advantage at this.
The infant state of the Colonies, as it is called, so far
from being against, is an argument in favour of independance.
We are sufficiently numerous, and were we more so, we might be less united.
Common Sense |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: man,
patient and narrow, whose wife had been in the insane asylum for
twenty years and whose only child was a crippled daughter, for
whose
comfort and happiness he had toiled and sacrificed himself
without stint.
It was a surprise to find him here, as care-free and joyful as
the rest.
The lives of others in the company were revealed in brief
glimpses
as they talked together--a mother, early widowed, who had kept
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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 A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: stepping on the spider's legs and tripping himself up,
dragging him backward, shoving him bodily ahead, dragging him
up stones six inches high instead of going around them,
climbing weeds twenty times his own height and jumping
from their summits--and finally leaving him in the middle
of the road to be confiscated by any other fool of an
ant that wanted him. I measured the ground which this
ass traversed, and arrived at the conclusion that what he
had accomplished inside of twenty minutes would constitute
some such job as this--relatively speaking--for a man;
to wit: to strap two eight-hundred-pound horses together,
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