| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: lofty plateau in whose rocky cliffs the principal tribe of
Sarians find their cave-homes, a great hue and cry arose
from those who first discovered me.
Like wasps from their nests the hairy warriors poured
from their caves. The bows with their poison-tipped
arrows, which I had taught them to fashion and to use,
were raised against me. Swords of hammered iron--
another of my innovations--menaced me, as with lusty
shouts the horde charged down.
It was a critical moment. Before I should be recog-
nized I might be dead. It was evident that all semblance
Pellucidar |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: glance he would see her dazzling and perfect, her eyes vague,
staring in mournful immobility, with a drooping head that made him
think of a tragic Venus arising before him, not from the foam of
the sea, but from a distant, still more formless, mysterious, and
potent immensity of mankind.
CHAPTER V
One afternoon Renouard stepping out on the terrace found nobody
there. It was for him, at the same time, a melancholy
disappointment and a poignant relief.
The heat was great, the air was still, all the long windows of the
house stood wide open. At the further end, grouped round a lady's
Within the Tides |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: men they were, too--of good families, and brought up in the
church. Ed Smith, the printer's apprentice, nineteen, had been
the head Sunday-school boy, and had once recited three thousand
Bible verses without making a break. Dick Savage, twenty, the
baker's apprentice; Will Joyce, twenty-two, journeyman
blacksmith; and Henry Taylor, twenty-four, tobacco-stemmer--were
the other three. They were all of a sentimental cast; they were
all romance-readers; they all wrote poetry, such as it was; they
were all vain and foolish; but they had never before been
suspected of having anything bad in them.
They withdrew from society, and grew more and more
What is Man? |
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 $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: have appeared, from time to time, in the great English reviews,
and in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it
has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly
every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world.
Every scribbler, almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time
or another; I had mine fifteen years ago. The book gets out of print,
every now and then, and one ceases to hear of it for a season;
but presently the nations and near and far colonies of our tongue
and lineage call for it once more, and once more it issues from some
London or Continental or American press, and runs a new course around
the globe, wafted on its way by the wind of a world's laughter.
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