| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: speculations was that of the valid, the exemplary work of art. Our
young woman's imagination, it appeared, had wandered far in that
direction, and her guest had the rare delight of feeling in their
conversation a full interchange. This episode will have lived for
years in his memory and even in his wonder; it had the quality that
fortune distils in a single drop at a time - the quality that
lubricates many ensuing frictions. He still, whenever he likes,
has a vision of the room, the bright red sociable talkative room
with the curtains that, by a stroke of successful audacity, had the
note of vivid blue. He remembers where certain things stood, the
particular book open on the table and the almost intense odour of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: representative system in a country half-civilised, profoundly
divided by religious hatred, and peopled by divers races.
The attempt has not prospered hitherto. The authors of the
reformation had to learn that despite their liberalism they were
forced to govern by methods very like those employed by the
government overthrown. They could neither prevent summary
executions nor wholesale massacres of Christians, nor could they
remedy a single abuse.
It would be unjust to reproach them. What in truth could they
have done to change a people whose traditions have been fixed so
long, whose religious passions are so intense, and whose
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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 Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: Tansey rounded the table, and flung himself, with superb nerve, upon
the Mexican. Just then a clangour began; the clocks of the city were
tolling the midnight hour. Tansey clutched at Torres, and, for a
moment, felt in his grasp the crunch of velvet and the cold facets of
the glittering gems. The next instant, the bedecked caballero turned
in his hands to a shrunken, leather-visaged, white-bearded, old, old,
screaming mummy, sandalled, ragged, and four hundred and three. The
Mexican woman was crawling to her feet, and laughing. She shook her
brown hand in the face of the whining /viejo/.
"Go, now," she cried, "and seek your senorita. It was I, Ramoncito,
who brought you to this. Within each moon you eat of the life-giving
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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 Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: troubles),' said Mr. Thomson with something the tone of a man
quoting. 'Is that it?'
'To say truth,' said I, 'I have only seen some dim reference
to the things in memoirs; and heard some traditions dimmer
still, through my uncle (whom I think you knew). My uncle
lived when he was a boy in the neighbourhood of St. Bride's;
he has often told me of the avenue closed up and grown over
with grass, the great gates never opened, the last lord and
his old maid sister who lived in the back parts of the house,
a quiet, plain, poor, hum-drum couple it would seem - but
pathetic too, as the last of that stirring and brave house -
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