| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Kulan Tith, summoning us to the audience chamber where Thuvan Dihn
was to receive his daughter after years of separation, and I was to
be reunited with the glorious daughter of Helium after an almost
unbroken separation of twelve years.
My heart pounded within my bosom until I looked about me in
embarrassment, so sure was I that all within the room must hear.
My arms ached to enfold once more the divine form of her
whose eternal youth and undying beauty were but outward
manifestations of a perfect soul.
The Warlord of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: I am afraid I must be at bottom, what a cheerful Indian critic has
dubbed me, 'a faddling hedonist,' for this description of the
brother's motives gave me somewhat of a shock. I should have
preferred to think he had chosen the life for its own sake, and not
for ulterior purposes; and this shows how profoundly I was out of
sympathy with these good Trappists, even when I was doing my best
to sympathise. But to the CURE the argument seemed decisive.
'Hear that!' he cried. 'And I have seen a marquis here, a marquis,
a marquis' - he repeated the holy word three times over - 'and
other persons high in society; and generals. And here, at your
side, is this gentleman, who has been so many years in armies -
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