| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: Daylight away from Bettles and Kearns.
"Winner pays!" Daylight shouted, closing the wager.
"And I'm sure going to win, and sixty days is a long time between
drinks, so I pay now. Name your brand, you hoochinoos! Name
your
brand!"
Bettles, a glass of whiskey in hand, climbed back on his chair,
and swaying back and forth, sang the one song he knew:-
"O, it's Henry Ward Beecher
And Sunday-school teachers
All sing of the sassafras-root;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: magnificent green pastures, her most cherished creation, the priest
and the mayor did not take their eyes from the groups below, whose
expression it was impossible to misinterpret; pain, sadness, and
regret, mingled with hope, were plainly on all those faces. No one in
Montegnac or its neighborhood was ignorant that Monsieur Roubaud had
gone to Paris to bring the best physician science afforded, or that
the benefactress of the whole district was in the last stages of a
fatal illness. In all the markets through a circumference of thirty
miles the peasants asked those of Montegnac,--
"How is your good woman now?"
The great vision of death hovered over the land, and dominated that
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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 Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: come back with a new she."
The apes waited his nearer approach. Teeka turned a snarling,
fanged face toward them. She was not pretty to look upon,
yet through the blood and hatred upon her countenance
they realized that she was beautiful, and they envied
Toog--alas! they did not know Teeka.
As they squatted looking at one another there raced through
the trees toward them a long-tailed little monkey with
gray whiskers. He was a very excited little monkey when he
came to a halt upon the limb of a tree directly overhead.
"Two strange bulls come," he cried. One is a Mangani,
The Jungle Tales of Tarzan |
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 Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: the dwellings of the burghers of Paris in the sixteenth century, and
how simple their lives. Perhaps this simplicity of habits and of
thought was the cause of the grandeur of that old bourgeoisie which
was certainly grand, free, and noble,--more so, perhaps, than the
bourgeoisie of the present day. Its history is still to be written; it
requires and it awaits a man of genius. This reflection will doubtless
rise to the lips of every one after reading the almost unknown
incident which forms the basis of this Study and is one of the most
remarkable facts in the history of that bourgeoisie. It will not be
the first time in history that conclusion has preceded facts.
In 1560, the houses of the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie skirted the
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