| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: sun had risen. His mind, reverted to the primitive,
was untroubled by any more serious obligations than
those of providing sustenance, and safeguarding his life.
Therefore, there was nothing to awaken for until
danger threatened, or the pangs of hunger assailed.
It was the latter which eventually aroused him.
Opening his eyes, he stretched his giant thews, yawned,
rose and gazed about him through the leafy foliage of
his retreat. Across the wasted meadowlands and fields
of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, Tarzan of the Apes
looked, as a stranger, upon the moving figures of
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: almost as contentious as my own had been. This made me, with
genuine immediate horror, exclaim: "You haven't influenced her, I
hope!" and my emphasis brought back the blood with a rush to poor
Adelaide's face. She declared while she blushed--for I had
frightened her again--that she had never influenced anybody and
that the girl had only seen and heard and judged for herself. HE
had influenced her, if I would, as he did every one who had a soul:
that word, as we knew, even expressed feebly the power of the
things he said to haunt the mind. How could she, Adelaide, help it
if Miss Anvoy's mind was haunted? I demanded with a groan what
right a pretty girl engaged to a rising M.P. had to HAVE a mind;
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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 Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: sunless, and romantic. It was here that the town was
most overbuilt; but the overbuilding has been all rooted
out, and not only a free fair-way left along the High
Street with an open space on either side of the church,
but a great porthole, knocked in the main line of the
LANDS, gives an outlook to the north and the New Town.
There is a silly story of a subterranean passage
between the Castle and Holyrood, and a bold Highland
piper who volunteered to explore its windings. He made
his entrance by the upper end, playing a strathspey; the
curious footed it after him down the street, following
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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 Euthyphro by Plato: justly, then your duty is to let the matter alone; but if unjustly, then
even if the murderer lives under the same roof with you and eats at the
same table, proceed against him. Now the man who is dead was a poor
dependant of mine who worked for us as a field labourer on our farm in
Naxos, and one day in a fit of drunken passion he got into a quarrel with
one of our domestic servants and slew him. My father bound him hand and
foot and threw him into a ditch, and then sent to Athens to ask of a
diviner what he should do with him. Meanwhile he never attended to him and
took no care about him, for he regarded him as a murderer; and thought that
no great harm would be done even if he did die. Now this was just what
happened. For such was the effect of cold and hunger and chains upon him,
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