| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle: to me. Far from hushing the thing up, I have brought a gentleman
down from London to inquire more deeply into it."
"This gentleman?" she asked, facing round to me.
"No, his friend. He wished us to leave him alone. He is round in
the stable lane now."
"The stable lane?" She raised her dark eyebrows. "What can he
hope to find there? Ah! this, I suppose, is he. I trust, sir,
that you will succeed in proving, what I feel sure is the truth,
that my cousin Arthur is innocent of this crime."
"I fully share your opinion, and I trust, with you, that we may
prove it," returned Holmes, going back to the mat to knock the
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the
agents on injustice. A common and natural result of an
undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of
soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates,
powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over
hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against
their common sense and consciences, which makes it very
steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.
They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in
which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined.
Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: sending forth a courageous whiff of smoke, "I will thrive, if an
honest man and a gentleman may!"
"Oh, thou wilt be the death of me!" cried the old witch,
convulsed with laughter. "That was well said. If an honest man
and a gentleman may! Thou playest thy part to perfection. Get
along with thee for a smart fellow; and I will wager on thy head,
as a man of pith and substance, with a brain and what they call a
heart, and all else that a man should have, against any other
thing on two legs. I hold myself a better witch than yesterday,
for thy sake. Did not I make thee? And I defy any witch in New
England to make such another! Here; take my staff along with
Mosses From An Old Manse |
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 Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: anxious to ascertain.
Gernois, never cordial, had kept more than ever aloof
from Tarzan since the episode in the dining-room of the
hotel at Aumale. His attitude on the few occasions that
they had been thrown together had been distinctly hostile.
That he might keep up the appearance of the character
he was playing, Tarzan spent considerable time hunting in
the vicinity of Bou Saada. He would spend entire days in
the foothills, ostensibly searching for gazelle, but on the
few occasions that he came close enough to any of the
beautiful little animals to harm them he invariably allowed
The Return of Tarzan |
