| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: their officers.
"They cannot understand you," said the girl and so in the
bastard tongue that is the medium of communication between
the Germans and the blacks of their colony, she repeated the
white man's question.
Usanga grinned. "You know where they are, white woman,"
he replied. "They are dead, and if this white man does not
do as I tell him, he, too, will be dead."
"What do you want of him?" asked the girl.
"I want him to teach me how to fly like a bird," replied
Usanga.
Tarzan the Untamed |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: walking deliberately, with his back to the sea, Dominic vanished
from my sight.
With the quality of our desires, thoughts, and wonder proportioned
to our infinite littleness, we measure even time itself by our own
stature. Imprisoned in the house of personal illusions, thirty
centuries in mankind's history seem less to look back upon than
thirty years of our own life. And Dominic Cervoni takes his place
in my memory by the side of the legendary wanderer on the sea of
marvels and terrors, by the side of the fatal and impious
adventurer, to whom the evoked shade of the soothsayer predicted a
journey inland with an oar on his shoulder, till he met men who had
The Mirror of the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: "Dear me!" she said, in the easy tone of the wantons of the old time,
"people must live, even if they are republicans."
The terrible Mademoiselle Cochet, her maid and female vizier, had
tried to enlighten her mistress when she saw the ascendency Gaubertin
was obtaining over one whom he began by calling "Madame" in defiance
of the revolutionary laws about equality; but Gaubertin, in his turn,
enlightened Mademoiselle Cochet by showing her a so-called
denunciation sent to his father, the prosecuting attorney, in which
she was vehemently accused of corresponding with Pitt and Coburg. From
that time forward the two powers went on shares--shares a la
Montgomery. Cochet praised Gaubertin to Madame, and Gaubertin praised
|
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 From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: members of the Gun Club all the conditions requisite for the
construction of their Columbiad.
"Halt!" said Barbicane, reining up. "Has this place any
local appellation?"
"It is called Stones Hill," replied one of the Floridans.
Barbicane, without saying a word, dismounted, seized his instruments,
and began to note his position with extreme exactness. The little
band, drawn up in the rear, watched his proceedings in profound silence.
At this moment the sun passed the meridian. Barbicane, after a
few moments, rapidly wrote down the result of his observations,
and said:
From the Earth to the Moon |
