| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: "Hounds IN FULL CRY I like," said she:
(Oh how I longed to snub her!)
"Of fish, a whale's the one for me,
IT IS SO FULL OF BLUBBER!"
The night's performance was "King John."
"It's dull," she wept, "and so-so!"
Awhile I let her tears flow on,
She said they soothed her woe so!
At length the curtain rose upon
'Bombastes Furioso.'
In vain we roared; in vain we tried
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: protection or redress from the oppressor, unless she have the plea
of bodily fear; yet how many ways are there of goading the soul
almost to madness, equally unmanly, though not so mean? When such
laws were framed, should not impartial lawgivers have first decreed,
in the style of a great assembly, who recognized the existence of
an _etre_ _supreme_, to fix the national belief, that the husband
should always be wiser and more virtuous than his wife, in order
to entitle him, with a show of justice, to keep this idiot, or
perpetual minor, for ever in bondage. But I must have done--
on this subject, my indignation continually runs away with me.
"The company of the gentleman I have already mentioned, who
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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 Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: He would pat and stroke her and say, "Well, old Pet,
and how is your little Darkie?" I was a dull black, so he called me Darkie;
then he would give me a piece of bread, which was very good,
and sometimes he brought a carrot for my mother. All the horses
would come to him, but I think we were his favorites.
My mother always took him to the town on a market day in a light gig.
There was a plowboy, Dick, who sometimes came into our field
to pluck blackberries from the hedge. When he had eaten all he wanted
he would have what he called fun with the colts, throwing stones and sticks
at them to make them gallop. We did not much mind him,
for we could gallop off; but sometimes a stone would hit and hurt us.
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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 The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: qualifications requisite in an historian, and retained by neither
party, have resolved to comply with the urgent importunity of my
friends, by writing down a full impartial account thereof.
The guardian of the regal library, a person of great valour, but
chiefly renowned for his humanity, had been a fierce champion for
the Moderns, and, in an engagement upon Parnassus, had vowed with
his own hands to knock down two of the ancient chiefs who guarded a
small pass on the superior rock, but, endeavouring to climb up, was
cruelly obstructed by his own unhappy weight and tendency towards
his centre, a quality to which those of the Modern party are
extremely subject; for, being light-headed, they have, in
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