| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: of Lys' fleeting philosophy of the valuelessness of human life.
I realized that she was quite right--that we were but comic figures
hopping from the cradle to the grave, of interest to practically
no other created thing than ourselves and our few intimates.
Behind To-jo stood So-ta. She raised one hand with the palm
toward me--the Caspakian equivalent of a negative shake of the head.
"Let me think about it," I parried, and To-jo said that he would
wait until night. He would give me a day to think it over; then
he left, and the women left--the men for the hunt, and the women,
as I later learned from So-ta, for the warm pool where they immersed
their bodies as did the shes of the Sto-lu. "Ata," explained So-ta,
The Land that Time Forgot |
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: At first it was to prevent bills being noted, to the injury of
his credit; then to bail him; and afterwards to prevent an execution
from entering the house. I began at last to conclude, that he
would have made more exertions of his own to extricate himself,
had he not relied on mine, cruel as was the task he imposed on me;
and I firmly determined that I would make use of no more pretexts.
"From the moment I pronounced this determination, indifference
on his part was changed into rudeness, or something worse.
"He now seldom dined at home, and continually returned at a
late hour, drunk, to bed. I retired to another apartment; I was
glad, I own, to escape from his; for personal intimacy without
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: South African mierkat, for instance, the female is generally more combative
and more difficult to tame than the male; and it is the males who from the
moment of birth watch over the young with the most passionate and tender
solicitude, keeping them warm under their persons, carrying them to places
of safety in their mouths, and feeding them till full grown; and this they
do not only for their own young, but to any young who may be brought in
contact with them. We have known a male mierkat so assiduous in feeding
young that were quite unrelated to himself, taking to them every morsel of
food given him, that we have been compelled to shut him up in a room alone
when feeding him, to prevent his starving himself to death: the male
mierkat thus exhibiting exactly those psychic qualities which are generally
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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 Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: salaries together to buy her the spangled dress for her first
appearance. It had taken a great many apologies and promises as
to their future behaviour to calm her, and now they had again
disobeyed her. It would be a great relief when to-night's ordeal
was over.
Jim watched Polly uneasily as she came from the dressing tent and
stopped to gaze at the nearby church steeple. The incongruity of
the slang, that soon came from her delicately formed lips, was
lost upon him as she turned her eyes toward him.
"Say, Jim," she said, with a Western drawl, "them's a funny lot
of guys what goes to them church places, ain't they?"
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