| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: More then a Mistris to me, no more anger
As you love any thing that's honourable:
We were not bred to talke, man; when we are arm'd
And both upon our guards, then let our fury,
Like meeting of two tides, fly strongly from us,
And then to whom the birthright of this Beauty
Truely pertaines (without obbraidings, scornes,
Dispisings of our persons, and such powtings,
Fitter for Girles and Schooleboyes) will be seene
And quickly, yours, or mine: wilt please you arme, Sir,
Or if you feele your selfe not fitting yet
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: right, which means there's been a row in the camp and they are
settling it if they can, and children playing JUST the same as any
other children, and little boys shooting at a mark with bows, and I
cuffed one of them because he hit a dog with a club that wasn't
doing anything, and he resented it but before long he wished he
hadn't: but this sentence is getting too long and I will start
another. Thunder-Bird put on his Sunday-best war outfit to let me
see him, and he was splendid to look at, with his face painted red
and bright and intense like a fire-coal and a valance of eagle
feathers from the top of his head all down his back, and he had his
tomahawk, too, and his pipe, which has a stem which is longer than
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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 Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: the youth of action; these are often commingled in men whom Nature has
favored and who, like Caesar, like Newton, like Bonaparte, are the
greatest among great men.
I was measuring how long a time it might take a thought to develop.
Compass in hand, standing on a rock some hundred fathoms above the
ocean, the waves of which were breaking on the reef below, I surveyed
my future, filling it with books as an engineer or builder traces on
vacant ground a palace or a fort.
The sea was beautiful; I had just dressed after bathing; and I awaited
Pauline, who was also bathing, in a granite cove floored with fine
sand, the most coquettish bath-room that Nature ever devised for her
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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 Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the earth except for the upward bend of the glossy back as it
gathered for the spring.
No longer the tail lashed--quiet and straight behind her it lay.
An instant she paused thus, as though turned to stone, and
then, with an awful scream, she sprang.
Sabor, the lioness, was a wise hunter. To one less wise the
wild alarm of her fierce cry as she sprang would have seemed
a foolish thing, for could she not more surely have fallen upon
her victims had she but quietly leaped without that loud shriek?
But Sabor knew well the wondrous quickness of the jungle
folk and their almost unbelievable powers of hearing. To
Tarzan of the Apes |
