| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Upon a long table lay a victim even as I was ushered
into the room. Several Mahars stood about the poor
creature holding him down so that he could not move.
Another, grasping a sharp knife with her three-toed
fore foot, was laying open the victim's chest and abdomen.
No anesthetic had been administered and the shrieks
and groans of the tortured man were terrible to hear.
This, indeed, was vivisection with a vengeance.
Cold sweat broke out upon me as I realized that soon my turn
would come. And to think that where there was no such
thing as time I might easily imagine that my suffering
 At the Earth's Core |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: the palm trees, and casting his eyes alternately on the desert in
quest of some liberator and on his terrible companion to watch her
uncertain clemency.
The panther looked at the place where the date stones fell, and every
time that he threw one down her eyes expressed an incredible mistrust.
She examined the man with an almost commercial prudence. However, this
examination was favorable to him, for when he had finished his meager
meal she licked his boots with her powerful rough tongue, brushing off
with marvelous skill the dust gathered in the creases.
"Ah, but when she's really hungry!" thought the Frenchman. In spite of
the shudder this thought caused him, the soldier began to measure
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