| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: enormous trees, a strange sight so far from a Martian waterway.
The ground itself was clothed in brilliant scarlet sward,
picked out with innumerable patches of gorgeous wild flowers.
Beneath the glorious effulgence of the two moons the
scene was one of indescribable loveliness, tinged with the
weirdness of strange enchantment.
For only an instant, however, did his gaze rest upon
the natural beauties outspread before him. Almost
immediately they were riveted upon the figure of a great
banth standing across the carcass of a new-killed thoat.
The huge beast, his tawny mane bristling around his
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: I must soon quit at the call of Nature, and shall rejoice in the
hour of imbecility and pain to devolve it upon thee.'
"I thought myself honoured by this testimony, and protested that
whatever could conduce to his happiness would add likewise to mine.
"'Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit. I
have possessed for five years the regulation of the weather and the
distribution of the seasons. The sun has listened to my dictates,
and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds at my
call have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my
command. I have restrained the rage of the dog-star, and mitigated
the fervours of the crab. The winds alone, of all the elemental
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