| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: "Well, yes--but--" replied Giles. He went over to Grace, and
hoped none of it had gone into her eye.
"Oh no," she said. "Only a sprinkle on my face. It was nothing."
"Kiss it and make it well," gallantly observed Mr. Bawtree.
Miss Melbury blushed.
The timber-merchant said, quickly, "Oh, it is nothing! She must
bear these little mishaps." But there could be discerned in his
face something which said "I ought to have foreseen this."
Giles himself, since the untoward beginning of the feast, had not
quite liked to see Grace present. He wished he had not asked such
people as Bawtree and the hollow-turner. He had done it, in
The Woodlanders |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: I have you in me power at last. I go; but I shall return!"
And the son of Tarzan skipped across the room, slipped through
the open window, and slid to liberty by way of the down spout
from an eaves trough.
Mr. Moore wriggled and struggled about the bed. He was
sure that he should suffocate unless aid came quickly. In his
frenzy of terror he managed to roll off the bed. The pain and
shock of the fall jolted him back to something like sane
consideration of his plight. Where before he had been unable
to think intelligently because of the hysterical fear that had
claimed him he now lay quietly searching for some means of escape
The Son of Tarzan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: the blood of Absyrtus still tracks me, and woe follows hard
upon woe. And now some dark horror will clutch me, if I come
near the Isle of Ierne. (7) Unless you will cling to the
land, and sail southward and southward for ever, I shall
wander beyond the Atlantic, to the ocean which has no shore.'
Then they blest the magic bough, and sailed southward along
the land. But ere they could pass Ierne, the land of mists
and storms, the wild wind came down, dark and roaring, and
caught the sail, and strained the ropes. And away they drove
twelve nights, on the wide wild western sea, through the
foam, and over the rollers, while they saw neither sun nor
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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 Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: CORINEIUS.
Your highness knows how many victories,
How many trophies I erected have
Triumphantly in every place we came.
The Grecian Monarch, warlike Pandrassus,
And all the crew of the Molossians;
Goffarius, the arm strong King of Gauls,
And all the borders of great Aquitaine,
Have felt the force of our victorious arms,
And to their cost beheld our chivalry.
Where ere Aurora, handmaid of the Sun,
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