| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: far from opening the eyes of the Antiquities, very nearly brought
about a rupture between the Troisvilles and the salon d'Esgrignon, the
latter declaring that the Troisvilles were mixing themselves up with
all sorts of people.
There was one, and one only, among all these folk who did not share
their illusions. And that one, needless to say, was Chesnel the
notary. Although his devotion, sufficiently proved already, was simply
unbounded for the great house now reduced to three persons; although
he accepted all their ideas, and thought them nothing less than right,
he had too much common sense, he was too good a man of business to
more than half the families in the department, to miss the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: leaving the ground.
With the blow upon my head came unconsciousness.
It could not have been more than a few seconds that I lay
senseless there upon the northern ice, while all that was
dearest to me drifted farther from my reach in the clutches of
that black fiend, for when I opened my eyes Thurid and Matai Shang
yet battled at the ladder's top, and the flier drifted but a
hundred yards farther to the south--but the end of the trailing
rope was now a good thirty feet above the ground.
The Warlord of Mars |
