| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: once more upon these familiar, silent stars!"
Thence Graham was taken by Asano along devious
ways to the great gambling and business quarters
where the bulk of the fortunes in the city were lost
and made. It impressed him as a well-nigh interminable
series of very high halls, surrounded by tiers upon
tiers of galleries into which opened thousands of
offices, and traversed by a complicated multitude of
bridges, footways, aerial motor rails, and trapeze and
cable leaps. And here more than anywhere the note
of vehement vitality, of uncontrollable, hasty activity.
When the Sleeper Wakes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: know him. The most clear-sighted observer, on seeing this stranger,
could not have helped taking him for a clever man attracted to this
rural festivity by some powerful motive.
All these observations cost Emilie only a minute's attention, during
which the privileged gentleman under her severe scrutiny became the
object of her secret admiration. She did not say to herself, "He must
be a peer of France!" but "Oh, if only he is noble, and he surely must
be----" Without finishing her thought, she suddenly rose, and followed
by her brother the General, she made her way towards the column,
affecting to watch the merry quadrille; but by a stratagem of the eye,
familiar to women, she lost not a gesture of the young man as she went
|
| 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: have him anesthetized and his soft palate put where it would never
again flap like a loose sail in the wind.
We passed Harrisburg as I stood there. It was starlight, and the
great crests of the Alleghanies had given way to low hills. At
intervals we passed smudges of gray white, no doubt in daytime
comfortable farms, which McKnight says is a good way of putting it,
the farms being a lot more comfortable than the people on them.
I was growing drowsy: the woman with the bronze hair and the
horrified face was fading in retrospect. It was colder, too, and
I turned with a shiver to go in. As I did so a bit of paper
fluttered into the air and settled on my sleeve, like a butterfly
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 At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: picturesque background for the scenes which were enacted
in the arena before it, but presently, after the wooden
benches had been pretty well filled by slaves and Sagoths,
I discovered the purpose of the bowlders, for then
the Mahars began to file into the enclosure.
They marched directly across the arena toward the rocks upon
the opposite side, where, spreading their bat-like wings,
they rose above the high wall of the pit, settling down
upon the bowlders above. These were the reserved seats,
the boxes of the elect.
Reptiles that they are, the rough surface of a great stone
At the Earth's Core |
