| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: vault where the temperature is too low for incubation. Every
year these eggs are carefully examined by a council of twenty
chieftains, and all but about one hundred of the most perfect
are destroyed out of each yearly supply. At the end of five
years about five hundred almost perfect eggs have been chosen
from the thousands brought forth. These are then placed in
the almost air-tight incubators to be hatched by the sun's rays
after a period of another five years. The hatching which we
had witnessed today was a fairly representative event of its
kind, all but about one per cent of the eggs hatching in two
days. If the remaining eggs ever hatched we knew nothing of
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: was being enacted here.
Sir Andrew had not uttered another word. Then it was that
that extra sense became potent in Marguerite Blakeney. She could not
see, for her two eyes were closed, she could not hear, for the noise
from the ball-room drowned the soft rustle of that momentous scrap of
paper; nevertheless she knew-as if she had both seen and heard--that
Sir Andrew was even now holding the paper to the flame of one of the
candles.
At the exact moment that it began to catch fire, she opened
her eyes, raised her hand and, with two dainty fingers, had taken the
burning scrap of paper from the young man's hand. Then she blew out
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: ogres. The dignity of labour, the joy of life, maternal affection,
the terrors of death: all these do not count, in others; the main
point is that morsel the be tender and savoury.
According to the etymology of her name--[Greek text], a cord--the
Thomisus should be like the ancient lictor, who bound the sufferer
to the stake. The comparison is not inappropriate as regards many
Spiders who tie their prey with a thread to subdue it and consume
it at their ease; but it just happens that the Thomisus is at
variance with her label. She does not fasten her Bee, who, dying
suddenly of a bite in the neck, offers no resistance to her
consumer. Carried away by his recollection of the regular tactics,
The Life of the Spider |
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 Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: vintages of Issoudun. Rigord writes of this city in language which
leaves no doubt as to its great population and its immense commerce.
But these testimonies both assign a much lesser age to the city than
its ancient antiquity demands. In fact, the excavations lately
undertaken by a learned archaeologist of the place, Monsieur Armand
Peremet, have brought to light, under the celebrated tower of
Issoudun, a basilica of the fifth century, probably the only one in
France. This church preserves, in its very materials, the sign-manual
of an anterior civilization; for its stones came from a Roman temple
which stood on the same site.
Issoudun, therefore, according to the researches of this antiquary,
|
