| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: way. She was not accustomed to a midwife, she confessed. She cut the
cord herself, washed the new-born baby at her sister's house, walked
home, cooked supper for her boarders, and went to bed by eight
o'clock. The next day she got up and ironed. This tired her out, she
said, so she stayed in bed for two whole days. She milked cows the day
after the birth of the baby and sold the milk as well. Later in the
week, when she became tired, she hired someone to do that portion of
her work. This woman, we are further informed, kept cows, chickens,
and lodgers, and earned additional money by doing laundry and
charwork. At times her husband deserted her. His earnings amounted
to $1.70 a day, while a fifteen-year-old son earned $1.10 in a coal
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: The effect of his scientific budget-planning was that he felt at once
triumphantly wealthy and perilously poor, and in the midst of these
dissertations he stopped his car, rushed into a small news-and-miscellany
shop, and bought the electric cigar-lighter which he had coveted for a week.
He dodged his conscience by being jerky and noisy, and by shouting at the
clerk, "Guess this will prett' near pay for itself in matches, eh?"
It was a pretty thing, a nickeled cylinder with an almost silvery socket, to
be attached to the dashboard of his car. It was not only, as the placard on
the counter observed, "a dandy little refinement, lending the last touch of
class to a gentleman's auto," but a priceless time-saver. By freeing him from
halting the car to light a match, it would in a month or two easily save ten
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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 Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: his face turned upward toward the circling bird of prey, he
bellowed forth the challenge of the bull ape.
"I am Tarzan," he shouted, "Lord of the Jungle. Tarzan of
the Apes is not for Ska, eater of carrion. Go back to the lair
of Dango and feed off the leavings of the hyenas, for Tarzan
will leave no bones for Ska to pick in this empty wilderness of
death."
But before he reached the bottom of the canyon he again
was forced to the realization that his great strength was
waning, and when he dropped exhausted at the foot of the
cliff and saw before him the opposite wall that must be scaled,
Tarzan the Untamed |
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 The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: to save this monument of a past art found no echo, either in the town
itself or in the department. Though the castle of Issoudun has the
appearance of an old town, with its narrow streets and its ancient
mansions, the city itself, properly so called, which was captured and
burned at different epochs, notably during the Fronde, when it was
laid in ashes, has a modern air. Streets that are spacious in
comparison with those of other towns, and well-built houses form a
striking contrast to the aspect of the citadel,--a contrast that has
won for Issoudun, in certain geographies, the epithet of "pretty."
In a town thus constituted, without the least activity, even business
activity, without a taste for art, or for learned occupations, and
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