| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: of the jungle, miles away from the lair of Bukawai.
Only once had the black witch-doctor seen the devil-god,
as he was most often called among the blacks, and upon
that occasion Tarzan had robbed him of a fat fee,
at the same time putting the lie in the mouth of Bukawai,
and making his medicine seem poor medicine. All this
Bukawai never could forgive, though it seemed unlikely
that the opportunity would come to be revenged.
Yet it did come, and quite unexpectedly. Tarzan was hunting
far to the north. He had wandered away from the tribe,
as he did more and more often as he approached maturity,
The Jungle Tales of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: sneering, the selfish, and the cowardly are scattered in
broad sheets on every table, while the antidote, in small
volumes, lies unread upon the shelf. I have spoken of the
American and the French, not because they are so much baser,
but so much more readable, than the English; their evil is
done more effectively, in America for the masses, in French
for the few that care to read; but with us as with them, the
duties of literature are daily neglected, truth daily
perverted and suppressed, and grave subjects daily degraded
in the treatment. The journalist is not reckoned an
important officer; yet judge of the good he might do, the
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: lace scarf; but after the second tap the door was opened
immediately. Dinah said, "Will you let me come in, Hetty?" and
Hetty, without speaking, for she was confused and vexed, opened
the door wider and let her in.
What a strange contrast the two figures made, visible enough in
that mingled twilight and moonlight! Hetty, her cheeks flushed
and her eyes glistening from her imaginary drama, her beautiful
neck and arms bare, her hair hanging in a curly tangle down her
back, and the baubles in her ears. Dinah, covered with her long
white dress, her pale face full of subdued emotion, almost like a
lovely corpse into which the soul has returned charged with
Adam Bede |
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 Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: guard he was grave and abstracted. He began to look very thin, too,
and Lucy often heard him pacing the floor at night. She thought
that he seldom or never went to the Wheeler's.
And so passed the tenth day of David's illness, with the smile on
Elizabeth's face growing a trifle fixed as three days went by
without the shabby car rattling to the door; with "The Valley"
playing its second and final week before going into New York; and
with Leslie Ward unconsciously taking up the shuttle Clare had
dropped, and carrying the pattern one degree further toward
completion.
XIV
The Breaking Point |
