| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: I cannot, even now, bring myself to a narration of the
humiliation which I experienced that night as I stood behind
my black master in silent servility, now pouring his wine,
now cutting up his meats for him, now fanning him with a
large, plumed fan of feathers.
As fond as I had grown of him, I could have thrust a knife
into him, so keenly did I feel the affront that had been put
upon me. But at last the long banquet was concluded. The
tables were removed. The emperor ascended a dais at one end
of the room and seated himself upon a throne, and the
entertainment commenced. It was only what ancient history
Lost Continent |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: some cases a mere word has survived, while nothing or hardly anything of
the pre-Socratic, Platonic, or Aristotelian meaning is retained. There are
other questions familiar to the moderns, which have no place in ancient
philosophy. The world has grown older in two thousand years, and has
enlarged its stock of ideas and methods of reasoning. Yet the germ of
modern thought is found in ancient, and we may claim to have inherited,
notwithstanding many accidents of time and place, the spirit of Greek
philosophy. There is, however, no continuous growth of the one into the
other, but a new beginning, partly artificial, partly arising out of the
questionings of the mind itself, and also receiving a stimulus from the
study of ancient writings.
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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 The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: --I don't call to mind anything else. Me and Buck knew more about
selling corn salve than we did about Wall Street, but even we could
see how the Golconda Gold Bond Investment Company was making money.
You take in money and pay back ten per cent. of it; it's plain enough
that you make a clean, legitimate profit of 90 per cent., less
expenses, as long as the fish bite.
Atterbury wanted to be president and treasurer too, but Buck winks an
eye at him and says: "You was to furnish the brains. Do you call it
good brain work when you propose to take in money at the door, too?
Think again. I hereby nominate myself treasurer ad valorem, sine die,
and by acclamation. I chip in that much brain work free. Me and
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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 The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: and found herself down with fever at Benares in the middle of one
particularly hot April, two months after the last of her fellow
travellers had sailed from Bombay, haunted on her baking pillow by
pictorial views of the burning ghat and the vultures. The station
doctor, using appalling language to her punkah-coolie, ordered her
to the hills; and thus it was that she went to Simla, where she had
no intention of going, and where this story really begins.
Brookes has always declared that Providence in sending Miss Anderson
to Simla had it in mind to prevent a tragedy; but as to that there
is room for a difference of opinion: besides I can not be
anticipated by Brookes.
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