| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: imperfections of accent and pronunciation that were his.
Here he became acquainted with many of the French officers,
and soon became a favorite among them. He met Gernois,
whom he found to be a taciturn, dyspeptic-looking man of
about forty, having little or no social intercourse with
his fellows.
For a month nothing of moment occurred. Gernois apparently
had no visitors, nor did he on his occasional visits
to the town hold communication with any who might even
by the wildest flight of imagination be construed into secret
agents of a foreign power. Tarzan was beginning to hope that,
The Return of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: plant called Ti, which grows in abundance, and has a soft
brown root, in shape and size like a huge log of wood: this
served us for dessert, for it is as sweet as treacle, and with
a pleasant taste. There were, moreover, several other wild
fruits, and useful vegetables. The little stream, besides its
cool water, produced eels, and cray-fish. I did indeed admire
this scene, when I compared it with an uncultivated one in
the temperate zones. I felt the force of the remark, that
man, at least savage man, with his reasoning powers only
partly developed, is the child of the tropics.
As the evening drew to a close, I strolled beneath the
The Voyage of the Beagle |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: watered-silk ribbon, and by way of scarf a lawn handkerchief with a
broad hem, the two ends passed carelessly through her waistband. The
instinct of dress showed itself in that she was daintily shod, and
gray silk stockings carried out the suggestion of mourning in this
unvarying costume. Lastly, she always wore a bonnet after the English
fashion, always of the same shape and the same gray material, and a
black veil. Her health apparently was extremely weak; she looked very
ill. On fine evenings she would take her only walk, down to the bridge
of Tours, bringing the two children with her to breathe the fresh,
cool air along the Loire, and to watch the sunset effects on a
landscape as wide as the Bay of Naples or the Lake of Geneva.
|
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 Rescue by Joseph Conrad: line, a fold, perhaps the form of the eye, the droop of an
eyelid, the curve of a cheek, that trifling trait which on no two
faces on earth is alike, that in each face is the very foundation
of expression, as if, all the rest being heredity, mystery, or
accident, it alone had been shaped consciously by the soul
within.
Now and then he bent slightly over the slow beat of a red fan in
the curve of the deck chair to say a few words to Mrs. Travers,
who answered him without looking up, without a modulation of tone
or a play of feature, as if she had spoken from behind the veil
of an immense indifference stretched between her and all men,
The Rescue |
