| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: them, like a band of gipsies, work so neatly together? They amused
him as much as if they had really been a band of gipsies. He was
still young and had not seen much of the world - his English years
had been properly arid; therefore the reversed conventions of the
Moreens - for they had THEIR desperate proprieties - struck him as
topsy-turvy. He had encountered nothing like them at Oxford; still
less had any such note been struck to his younger American ear
during the four years at Yale in which he had richly supposed
himself to be reacting against a Puritan strain. The reaction of
the Moreens, at any rate, went ever so much further. He had
thought himself very sharp that first day in hitting them all off
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "That's a hard question to answer, for a queerer
assortment of creatures I never yet beheld,"
replied the nome. "However, such a collection of
curiosities may prove dangerous. There's a copper
man, worked by machinery--"
"Bah! that's only Tik-Tok," said Ruggedo.
"I'm not afraid of him. Why, only the other day
I met the fellow and threw him down a well."
"Then some one must have pulled him out again,"
said Kaliko. "And there's a little girl--"
"Dorothy?" asked Ruggedo, jumping up in fear.
Tik-Tok of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: tears running down her face, and didn't see us. Then Sandy said,
low and gentle, and full of pity:
"SHE'S hunting for her child! No, FOUND it, I reckon. Lord, how
she's changed! But I recognized her in a minute, though it's
twenty-seven years since I saw her. A young mother she was, about
twenty two or four, or along there; and blooming and lovely and
sweet? oh, just a flower! And all her heart and all her soul was
wrapped up in her child, her little girl, two years old. And it
died, and she went wild with grief, just wild! Well, the only
comfort she had was that she'd see her child again, in heaven -
'never more to part,' she said, and kept on saying it over and
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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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: than I had found out about the Fannings that, although I now faithfully
returned to my researches, and sat over open books until noon, I couldn't
tell you a word of what I read. Where was Miss Rieppe, and where was the
owner of the Hermana? Also, precisely how ill was the hero of
Chattanooga, her poor dear father?
At the Exchange I opened the door upon a conversation which, in
consequence, broke off abruptly; but this much I came in for:--
"Nothing but the slightest bruise above his eye. The other one is in
bed."
It was the severe lady who said this; I mean that lady who, among all the
severe ones I had met, seemed capable of the highest exercise of this
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