| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: moment, replied I, most willingly would I say something very civil
to you for all these courtesies. Any one may do a casual act of
good nature, but a continuation of them shows it is a part of the
temperature; and certainly, added I, if it is the same blood which
comes from the heart which descends to the extremes (touching her
wrist) I am sure you must have one of the best pulses of any woman
in the world. - Feel it, said she, holding out her arm. So laying
down my hat, I took hold of her fingers in one hand, and applied
the two forefingers of my other to the artery. -
- Would to heaven! my dear Eugenius, thou hadst passed by, and
beheld me sitting in my black coat, and in my lack-a-day-sical
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: Cheap repairs for the cheap 'uns. It paid, and the business grew,
For I bought me a steam-lathe patent, and that was a gold mine too.
"Cheaper to build 'em than buy 'em," ~I~ said, but M'Cullough he shied,
And we wasted a year in talking before we moved to the Clyde.
And the Lines were all beginning, and we all of us started fair,
Building our engines like houses and staying the boilers square.
But M'Cullough 'e wanted cabins with marble and maple and all,
And Brussels an' Utrecht velvet, and baths and a Social Hall,
And pipes for closets all over, and cutting the frames too light,
But M'Cullough he died in the Sixties, and -- Well, I'm dying to-night. . . .
I knew -- ~I~ knew what was coming, when we bid on the ~Byfleet~'s keel --
Verses 1889-1896 |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: In Nature and all things; which these soft fires
Not only enlighten, but with kindly heat
Of various influence foment and warm,
Temper or nourish, or in part shed down
Their stellar virtue on all kinds that grow
On earth, made hereby apter to receive
Perfection from the sun's more potent ray.
These then, though unbeheld in deep of night,
Shine not in vain; nor think, though men were none,
That Heaven would want spectators, God want praise:
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Paradise Lost |
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 Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: "Yes."
"Isn't it strange?"
"Well, no, Mongrel, I don't know that it is."
"Why don't you?"
"I've seen a good many human beings in my time. They are created
as they are; they cannot help it. They are only brutal because
that is their make; brutes would be brutal if it was THEIR make."
"To me, Sage-Brush, man is most strange and unaccountable. Why
should he treat dumb animals that way when they are not doing any
harm?"
"Man is not always like that, Mongrel; he is kind enough when he is
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