| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: to drop to six. In this country, as in Touraine, atmospheric
vicissitudes control commercial life. Wine-growers, proprietors, wood-
merchants, coopers, inn-keepers, mariners, all keep watch of the sun.
They tremble when they go to bed lest they should hear in the morning
of a frost in the night; they dread rain, wind, drought, and want
water, heat, and clouds to suit their fancy. A perpetual duel goes on
between the heavens and their terrestrial interests. The barometer
smooths, saddens, or makes merry their countenances, turn and turn
about. From end to end of this street, formerly the Grand'Rue de
Saumur, the words: "Here's golden weather," are passed from door to
door; or each man calls to his neighbor: "It rains louis," knowing
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: earthly muscles endow me under the conditions of lesser gravity and
air pressure upon Mars.
Yet even so I came near to tasting death that day in the gloomy
corridor beneath Mars's southern pole, for Lakor played a
trick upon me that in all my experience of fighting upon two
planets I never before had witnessed the like of.
The other thern was engaging me at the time, and I was forcing
him back--touching him here and there with my point until he was
bleeding from a dozen wounds, yet not being able to penetrate his
The Warlord of Mars |
