| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: THE LAST CENTURY, THE EFFECTS WERE EQUALLY DISASTROUS. Sylhet, a
district in the northeast of Bengal, had reaped unusually
plentiful harvests in 1780 and 1781, but the next crop was
destroyed by a local inundation, and, notwithstanding the
facilities for importation afforded by water-carriage, one third
of the people died."
Here we have a vivid representation of the economic condition of
a society which, however highly civilized in many important
respects, still retained, at the epoch treated of, its aboriginal
type of organization. Here we see each community brought face to
face with the impossible task of supplying, unaided, the
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: winds, butting into head seas.
The warmth, the stillness, the placid, drowsing quiet of Magdalena
Bay, steaming under the golden eye of a tropic heaven, the white,
baked beach, the bay-heads, striated with the mirage in the
morning, the coruscating sunset, the enchanted mystery of the
purple night, with its sheen of stars and riding moon, were now
replaced by the hale and vigorous snorting of the Trades, the roll
of breakers to landward, and the unremitting gallop of the
unnumbered multitudes of gray-green seas, careering silently past
the schooner, their crests occasionally hissing into brusque
eruptions of white froth, or smiting broad on under her counter,
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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 Dracula by Bram Stoker: of his cunning, for within half an hour I heard of him again.
This time he had broken out through the window of his room,
and was running down the avenue. I called to the attendants
to follow me, and ran after him, for I feared he was intent
on some mischief. My fear was justified when I saw the same
cart which had passed before coming down the road, having on it
some great wooden boxes. The men were wiping their foreheads,
and were flushed in the face, as if with violent exercise.
Before I could get up to him, the patient rushed at them,
and pulling one of them off the cart, began to knock his head
against the ground. If I had not seized him just at the moment,
Dracula |
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 Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: She dodged the outstretched arms and was away again toward the
hills and freedom, when her foot caught in one of the hoe-like
instruments with which the soil had been upturned and which had
been left, half imbedded in the ground. For an instant she ran
on, stumbling, in a mad effort to regain her equilibrium, but the
upturned furrows caught her feet--again she stumbled and this
time went down, and as she scrambled to rise again a heavy body
fell upon her and seized her arms. A moment later she was
surrounded and dragged to her feet and as she looked around she
saw Ghek crawling to his prostrate rykor. A moment later he
advanced to her side.
The Chessmen of Mars |
