| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: extent that he used to repeat them to himself. This is confirmed
by the remark made more than once by his old servant to the more
intimate friends. "What makes my heart heavy is to hear our
master in his room at night walking up and down and praying aloud
in the French language."
It must have been somewhat over a year afterward that I saw Mr.
Nicholas B.--or, more correctly, that he saw me--for the last
time. It was, as I have already said, at the time when my mother
had a three months' leave from exile, which she was spending in
the house of her brother, and friends and relations were coming
from far and near to do her honour. It is inconceivable that Mr.
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: "Then I don't care how soon he does it," I said despondently.
"I'd rather die quickly than by inches."
"Die!" he said. "Not a bit of it. Remember, our friend Pierce
is also a student of human nature. He's thinking it out now in
the cold plunge, and I miss my guess if Thoburn's sky-rocket
hasn't got a stick that'll come back and hit him on the head."
He had been playing with one of the chewing-gum jars, and when he
had gone I shoved it back into its place. It was by the
merest chance that I glanced at it, and I saw that he had slipped
a small white box inside. I knew I was being a silly old fool,
but my heart beat fast when I took it out and looked at it. On
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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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: national assembly (May 4, 1848, to May 29th, 1849);
Third--The period of the constitutional republic, or of the legislative
national assembly (May 29, 1849, to December 2, 1851).
The first period, from February 24, or the downfall of Louis Philippe,
to May 4, 1848, the date of the assembling of the constitutive
assembly--the February period proper--may be designated as the prologue
of the revolution. It officially expressed its' own character in this,
that the government which it improvised declared itself "provisional;"
and, like the government, everything that was broached, attempted, or
uttered, pronounced itself provisional. Nobody and nothing dared to
assume the right of permanent existence and of an actual fact. All the
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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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: clutch at the chimney against which they had been leaning, to
follow him down more cautiously; and when she had reached the
attic landing she paused again for a less definite reason,
leaning over the oak banister to strain her eyes through the
silence of the brown, sun-flecked depths below. She lingered
there till, somewhere in those depths, she heard the closing of a
door; then, mechanically impelled, she went down the shallow
flights of steps till she reached the lower hall.
The front door stood open on the mild sunlight of the court, and
hall and court were empty. The library door was open, too, and
after listening in vain for any sound of voices within, she
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