| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: are forever blasted! Will you not listen to a father's entreaties,
and pay some regard to a mother's tears. I know, and I do pray that God
will give me fortitude to bear with this sea of troubles, and rescue
my daughter, my Ambulinia, as a brand from the eternal burning."
"Forgive me, father, oh! forgive thy child," replied Ambulinia.
"My heart is ready to break, when I see you in this grieved state
of agitation. Oh! think not so meanly of me, as that I mourn
for my own danger. Father, I am only woman. Mother, I am only
the templement of thy youthful years, but will suffer courageously
whatever punishment you think proper to inflict upon me, if you will
but allow me to comply with my most sacred promises--if you will but
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: of Heev'n. Black shame was on his saul; his sins hove up before him
muckle as the Bass, and above a', that chief sin, that he should have a
hand in hagging and hashing at Christ's Kirk. But the truth is that he
resisted the spirit. Day cam, there were the rousing compainions, and
his guid resolves depairtit.
In thir days, dwalled upon the Bass a man of God, Peden the Prophet was
his name. Ye'll have heard tell of Prophet Peden. There was never the
wale of him sinsyne, and it's a question wi' mony if there ever was his
like afore. He was wild's a peat-hag, fearsome to look at, fearsome to
hear, his face like the day of judgment. The voice of him was like a
solan's and dinnle'd in folks' lugs, and the words of him like coals of
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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 Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: their empty battle--neither, evidently, has power to harm
the other. They are like two controversialists hurling
words at one another. While they are engaged we may
as well be devoting our energies to an attempt to find
the passage through the cliffs to the plain beyond."
As he spoke, Jav, turning from the battle for an instant,
caught his words. He saw the girl move to accompany the
Heliumite. A cunning look leaped to the Lotharian's eyes.
The thing that lay beyond that look had been deep
in his heart since first he had laid eyes upon Thuvia
of Ptarth. He had not recognized it, however, until now
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
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 Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: pattern, which is to please the supersensual ear, is yet
addressed, throughout and first of all, to the demands of
logic. Whatever be the obscurities, whatever the intricacies
of the argument, the neatness of the fabric must not suffer,
or the artist has been proved unequal to his design. And, on
the other hand, no form of words must be selected, no knot
must be tied among the phrases, unless knot and word be
precisely what is wanted to forward and illuminate the
argument; for to fail in this is to swindle in the game. The
genius of prose rejects the CHEVILLE no less emphatically
than the laws of verse; and the CHEVILLE, I should perhaps
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