| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: south down the gorge in the direction of their one slender
chance of life. Suddenly she touched him on the arm.
"Look," she whispered.
The man raised his eyes quickly in the direction of her gaze
to see the massive head of a great lion who was regarding them
from beyond a rocky projection at the first turning of the
gorge.
"Phew!" he exclaimed, "the beggars are everywhere."
"They do not go far from water do they," asked the girl
hopefully.
"I should imagine not," he replied; "a lion is not particularly
Tarzan the Untamed |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: abject and racking her dazed brain for his favourite stories,
when she saw, by the smoothing out of his mouth and the sudden
serenity of his eyes, that he was going to give her the
delicious but not wholly reassuring shock of being a good boy.
Thoughtfully he examined her face as she knelt down beside the
cot; then he poked out a finger and pressed it on her tearful
cheek.
"Poor Susy got a pain too," he said, putting his arms about her;
and as she hugged him close, he added philosophically: "Tell
Geordie a new story, darling, and you'll forget all about it."
XXVI
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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 Underground City by Jules Verne: It was now a silent abyss. It was like being at the mouth of
some extinct volcano.
When the mine was being worked, ingenious machines were used in certain
shafts of the Aberfoyle colliery, which in this respect was very well off;
frames furnished with automatic lifts, working in wooden slides,
oscillating ladders, called "man-engines," which, by a simple movement,
permitted the miners to descend without danger.
But all these appliances had been carried away, after the cessation
of the works. In the Yarrow shaft there remained only a long succession
of ladders, separated at every fifty feet by narrow landings.
Thirty of these ladders placed thus end to end led the visitor
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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 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: end. And that state of things must be changed," he finished up,
and he looked questioningly at his brother.
"Yes, of course," said Konstantin, looking at the patch of red
that had come out on his brother's projecting cheek bones.
"And so we're founding a locksmiths' association, where all the
production and profit and the chief instruments of production
will be in common."
"Where is the association to be?" asked Konstantin Levin.
"In the village of Vozdrem, Kazan government."
"But why in a village? In the villages, I think, there is plenty
of work as it is. Why a locksmiths' association in a village?"
Anna Karenina |
