| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs: a number of rough pine boards. These he measured and
sawed, fitted and nailed, working all the balance of the
night. By dawn, he had a long, narrow box, just a trifle
smaller than the hole he had dug in the garden. The box
resembled a crude coffin. When it was quite finished, in-
cluding a cover, he dragged it out into the garden and set
it upon two boards that spanned the hole, so that it rested
precisely over the excavation.
All these precautions methodically made, he returned to
the castle. In a little storeroom he searched for and found an
ax. With his thumb he felt of the edge--for an ax it was
 The Mad King |
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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: necessity of quantitative determinations, and seeks to supply
himself with a measure of voltaic electricity. This he finds in the
quantity of water decomposed by the current. He tests this measure
in all possible ways, to assure himself that no error can arise from
its employment. He places in the course of one and the same current
a series of cells with electrodes of different sizes, some of them
plates of platinum, others merely platinum wires, and collects the
gas liberated on each distinct pair of electrodes. He finds the
quantity of gas to be the same for all. Thus he concludes that when
the same quantity of electricity is caused to pass through a series
of cells containing acidulated water, the electro-chemical action is
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