| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: through your girlish infatuation you married so thoughtlessly.
I love you, Jane. You have but to say the word and no
further sorrows shall afflict you--even your baby shall be
returned to you unharmed."
Outside the door Sven Anderssen paused with the noonday
meal he had been carrying to Lady Greystoke. Upon the end
of his long, stringy neck his little head was cocked to one
side, his close-set eyes were half closed, his ears, so
expressive was his whole attitude of stealthy eavesdropping,
seemed truly to be cocked forward--even his long, yellow,
straggly moustache appeared to assume a sly droop.
The Beasts of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: * The manuscript is imperfect here. An episode seems
to have been intended, which was never committed to paper.
EDITOR. [Godwin's note]
CHAPTER 1O
"MY FATHER'S situation was now so distressing, that I prevailed on
my uncle to accompany me to visit him; and to lend me his assistance,
to prevent the whole property of the family from becoming the prey
of my brother's rapacity; for, to extricate himself out of present
difficulties, my father was totally regardless of futurity. I took
down with me some presents for my step-mother; it did not require
an effort for me to treat her with civility, or to forget the past.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: calling up the young women of his acquaintance. He came in
singing, and the office boy joined in with the uncertainty of
voice of fifteen. I smiled grimly. I was too busy with my own
troubles to find any joy in opening the door and startling them
into silence. I even heard, without resentment, Blobs of the
uncertain voice inquire when "Blake" would be back.
I hoped McKnight would arrive before the arrest occurred. There
were many things to arrange. But when at last, impatient of his
delay, I telephoned, I found he had been gone for more than an hour.
Clearly he was not coming directly to the office, and with such
resignation as I could muster I paced the floor and waited.
The Man in Lower Ten |
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 Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: own opinion, and so they separated.
"It's a strange race, those poets!" said the clerk, who was very fond of
soliloquizing. "I should like some day, just for a trial, to take such nature
upon me, and be a poet myself; I am very sure I should make no such miserable
verses as the others. Today, methinks, is a most delicious day for a poet.
Nature seems anew to celebrate her awakening into life. The air is so
unusually clear, the clouds sail on so buoyantly, and from the green herbage a
fragrance is exhaled that fills me with delight, For many a year have I not
felt as at this moment."
We see already, by the foregoing effusion, that he is become a poet; to give
further proof of it, however, would in most cases be insipid, for it is a most
Fairy Tales |
