| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: He was making some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly
chuckled within himself at his unexpected stroke of business.
The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far
more demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc
pieces I obtain the means of determining accurately both a meter
and a kilogramme."
CHAPTER VII
GALLIA WEIGHED
A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled
in the common hall of Nina's Hive.
"Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: Similiter et omnes revereantur Diaconos, ut
mandatum Jesu Christi; et Episcopum, ut Jesum
Christum, existentem filium Patris; Presbyteros
autem, ut concilium Dei et conjunctionem
Apostolorum. Sine his Ecclesia non vocatur; de
quibus suadeo vos sic habeo.
S. IGNATII AD TRALLIANOS.
And when this epistle is read among you, cause
that it be read also in the church of the
Laodiceans.
The broad-backed hippopotamus
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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 Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: dream; and, while they found their garments and a shield, Galazi took
beer and drank it, and got his breath again. They stood without the
hut. Now the heaven was grey, and east and west and north and south
tongues of flame shot up against the sky, for the town had been fired
by the Slayers.
Umslopogaas looked and his sense came back to him: he understood.
"Which way, brother?" he said.
"Through the fire and the impi to our Grey People on the mountain,"
said Galazi. "There, if we can win it, we shall find succour."
"What of my people in the kraal," asked Umslopogaas.
"They are not many, brother; the women and the children are gone. I
Nada the Lily |
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 The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: a minister, perhaps an ambassador."
"Here is my answer," said Rastignac. "An incessant battle is going on
--greater than common people who are not in it have any idea of--
between power in its swaddling-clothes and power in its childhood.
Power in swaddling-clothes is the Chamber of Deputies which, not being
restrained by an hereditary chamber--"
"Ha! ha!" said Maxime, "you are now a peer of France."
"I should say the same if I were not," said the new peer. "But don't
interrupt me; you are concerned in all this. The Chamber of Deputies
is fated to become the whole government, as de Marsay used to tell us
(the only man by whom France could have been saved), for peoples don't
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