| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: head. Father Buil was within with the Admiral, truculently
and suspiciously regarding the idolater who now had left
the hammock and seemed as well of a wound as any there!
But here without were eight or ten friars, gathered together
under a palm tree, making refection and talking
among themselves. One devout brother, sitting apart and
fasting, told his beads.
Said Guarin, ``I have been watching him. He is talking
to his _zeme_.--They are all butios?''
``Yes. Most of them are good men.''
``What is going to happen here to all my people? Something
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker: confidence, the real aid at a time of deadly danger and deadly fear
which you showed me. That awful man--I shall see him for ever in my
dreams. His black, malignant face will shut out all memory of
sunshine and happiness. I shall eternally see his evil eyes as he
threw himself into that well-hole in a vain effort to escape from
the consequences of his own misdoing. The more I think of it, the
more apparent it seems to me that he had premeditated the whole
thing--of course, except his own horrible death.
"Perhaps you have noticed a fur collar I occasionally wear. It is
one of my most valued treasures--an ermine collar studded with
emeralds. I had often seen the nigger's eyes gleam covetously when
 Lair of the White Worm |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: the top of the great oak staircase, a door was flung open, two
little white-robed figures appeared, and a large pillow whizzed
past his head! There was evidently no time to be lost, so, hastily
adopting the Fourth Dimension of Space as a means of escape, he
vanished through the wainscoting, and the house became quite quiet.
On reaching a small secret chamber in the left wing, he leaned up
against a moonbeam to recover his breath, and began to try and
realise his position. Never, in a brilliant and uninterrupted
career of three hundred years, had he been so grossly insulted. He
thought of the Dowager Duchess, whom he had frightened into a fit
as she stood before the glass in her lace and diamonds; of the four
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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 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: already."
"Oh, leave off!" said the accountant with a beaming but rather
cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of
Zherkov's joke, and purposely trying to appear stupider than he really
was.
"It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince," said the staff officer.
(He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing
a prince, but could not get it quite right.)
By this time they were all approaching Tushin's battery, and a
ball struck the ground in front of them.
"What's that that has fallen?" asked the accountant with a naive
 War and Peace |