| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: disappointment; "how dare you claim my daughter when you have done
nothing to earn her?"
"Thou art wiser, O King, than Solyman the Great, and thy servant is
as dust in the tomb of thy dog, yet thou errest. I did not, it is
true, kill the tiger, but behold! I have brought thee the scalp of
the man who had accumulated five million pieces of gold and was
after more."
The King drew his consoler-under-disappointment, and, flicking off
Camaraladdin's head, said:
"Learn, caitiff, the expediency of uncalculating zeal. If the
millionaire had been let alone he would have devoured the tiger."
Fantastic Fables |
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 Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: latter was doubtless in his mind for instance when he wrote
pleasantly to Miss Bartram that perhaps the great thing he had so
long felt as in the lap of the gods was no more than this
circumstance, which touched him so nearly, of her acquiring a house
in London. It was the first allusion they had yet again made,
needing any other hitherto so little; but when she replied, after
having given him the news, that she was by no means satisfied with
such a trifle as the climax to so special a suspense, she almost
set him wondering if she hadn't even a larger conception of
singularity for him than he had for himself. He was at all events
destined to become aware little by little, as time went by, that
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