| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: honest fellows lying on their weapons."
"Y' 'ave done wisely," said the lord. "It pleaseth me the rather,
since last night ye fought foolhardily, and more like a salvage
Saracen lunatic than any Christian warrior. But it becomes not me
to complain that had the undermost."
"Ye had the undermost indeed, my lord, since ye so fell," returned
Dick; "but had the waves not holpen me, it was I that should have
had the worst. Ye were pleased to make me yours with several
dagger marks, which I still carry. And in fine, my lord, methinks
I had all the danger, as well as all the profit, of that little
blind-man's mellay on the beach."
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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 Mansion by Henry van Dyke: a sheet of paper, and wrote rapidly:
"My dear boy, here is what you asked me for; do what you like
with it,
and ask for more if you need it. If you are still thinking of
that work with Grenfell, we'll talk it over to-day after church.
I want to know your heart better; and if I have made mistakes--"
A slight noise made him turn his head. Harold was sitting up in
bed
with wide-open eyes.
"Father!" he cried, "is that you?"
"Yes, my son," answered John Weightman; "I've come back--I mean
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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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: Two things besides this contributed to prevent the mob doing any
mischief. One was, that really the rich themselves had not laid up
stores of provisions in their houses as indeed they ought to have done,
and which if they had been wise enough to have done, and locked
themselves entirely up, as some few did, they had perhaps escaped the
disease better. But as it appeared they had not, so the mob had no
notion of finding stores of provisions there if they had broken in. as it
is plain they were sometimes very near doing, and which: if they bad,
they had finished the ruin of the whole city, for there were no regular
troops to have withstood them, nor could the trained bands have been
brought together to defend the city, no men being to be found to bear arms.
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: such firm root, in spite of the inscription, that
really you do not know what to believe; the more
so, as it is not the custom to believe inscriptions.
To reach the station Kobi, we still had to
descend about five versts, across ice-covered rocks
and plashy snow. The horses were exhausted; we
were freezing; the snowstorm droned with ever-
increasing violence, exactly like the storms of
our own northern land, only its wild melodies
were sadder and more melancholy.
"O Exile," I thought, "thou art weeping
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