| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: and their customs--the wild beasts; and he had always had a
droll way of drawing striking comparisons between savage
animals and civilized men that showed a considerable
knowledge of the former, and a keen, though somewhat cynical,
estimate of the latter.
When Monsieur Thuran stopped again to chat with her in
the afternoon she welcomed the break in the day's monotony.
But she had begun to become seriously concerned in Mr.
Caldwell's continued absence; somehow she constantly
associated it with the start she had had the night before,
when the dark object fell past her port into the sea.
The Return of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: and Gobseck----"
"You can call him the Comte de Restaud, now that Camille is not here,"
said the Vicomtesse.
"So be it! Well, time went by, and I saw nothing of the counter-deed,
which by rights should have been in my hands. An attorney in Paris
lives in such a whirl of business that with certain exceptions which
we make for ourselves, we have not the time to give each individual
client the amount of interest which he himself takes in his affairs.
Still, one day when Gobseck came to dine with me, I asked him as we
left the table if he knew how it was that I had heard no more of M. de
Restaud.
Gobseck |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: relic and rich chain will I bestow safely in the
treasury of our convent, until the decision of this,
warlike challenge.''
Having thus spoken, he crossed himself again and
again, and after many genuflections and muttered
prayers, he delivered the reliquary to Brother Ambrose,
his attendant monk, while he himself swept
up with less ceremony, but perhaps with no less
internal satisfaction, the golden chain, and bestowed
it in a pouch lined with perfumed leather, which
opened under his arm. ``And now, Sir Cedric,'' he
Ivanhoe |
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 A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: forms, for ten or eleven months out of the twelve, a safe if hardly
a commodious port. The ill-found island traders ride there with
their insufficient moorings the year through, and discharge, and
are loaded, without apprehension. Of danger, when it comes, the
glass gives timely warning; and that any modern warship, furnished
with the power of steam, should have been lost in Apia, belongs not
so much to nautical as to political history.
The weather throughout all that winter (the turbulent summer of the
islands) was unusually fine, and the circumstance had been
commented on as providential, when so many Samoans were lying on
their weapons in the bush. By February it began to break in
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