| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Larger and larger became the hole in the side of Goro.
With a scream, Taug leaped to his feet. His frenzied
"Kreeg-ahs!" brought the terrified tribe screaming and
chattering toward him.
"Look!" cried Taug, pointing at the moon. "Look! It
is as Tarzan said. Numa has sprung through the fires
and is devouring Goro. You called Tarzan names and
drove him from the tribe; now see how wise he was.
Let one of you who hated Tarzan go to Goro's aid.
See the eyes in the dark jungle all about Goro. He is
in danger and none can help him--none except Tarzan.
The Jungle Tales of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: possessorship that once, as a little girl, she had felt when her
mother had given her a gold locket and she had sat up in bed in the
dark to draw it from its hiding-place beneath her night-gown.
At length a dread of Evelina's return began to mingle with
these musings. How could she meet her younger sister's eye without
betraying what had happened? She felt as though a visible glory
lay on her, and she was glad that dusk had fallen when Evelina
entered. But her fears were superfluous. Evelina, always self-
absorbed, had of late lost all interest in the simple happenings of
the shop, and Ann Eliza, with mingled mortification and relief,
perceived that she was in no danger of being cross-questioned as to
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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 Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: The eight children do not belong to the woman in any real or legal
sense. When she has reared them they pass away from her into the
community as independent persons, marrying strangers, working for
strangers, spending on the community the life that has been built up
at her expense. No more monstrous injustice could be imagined than
that the burden of rearing the children should fall on her alone and
not on the celibates and the selfish as well.
This is so far recognized that already the child finds, wherever it
goes, a school for it, and somebody to force it into the school; and
more and more these schools are being driven by the mere logic of
facts to provide the children with meals, with boots, with spectacles,
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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 Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: "My dearest Catherine," continued the other without
at all listening to her, "I would not for all the world
be the means of hurrying you into an engagement before you
knew what you were about. I do not think anything would
justify me in wishing you to sacrifice all your happiness
merely to oblige my brother, because he is my brother,
and who perhaps after all, you know, might be just as happy
without you, for people seldom know what they would be at,
young men especially, they are so amazingly changeable
and inconstant. What I say is, why should a brother's
happiness be dearer to me than a friend's? You know I
Northanger Abbey |
