| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: the seashore?"
But something in Emma McChesney's eyes, and something in her set,
unsmiling face, told him that she was not seeing seashores. She
was staring straight at him, straight through him, miles beyond
him. There was about her that tense, electric, breathless air of
complete detachment, which always enveloped her when her
lightning mind was leaping ahead to a goal unguessed by the
slower thinking.
"What's your tailor's name?"
"Name? Trotter. Why?"
Emma McChesney had the telephone operator before he could finish.
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: deserted us.
7
We stood there, grouped about the body of the dead
Grabritin, looking futilely down the river to where it made
an abrupt curve to the west, a quarter of a mile below us,
and was lost to sight, as though we expected to see the
truant returning to us with our precious launch--the thing
that meant life or death to us in this unfriendly, savage
world.
I felt, rather than saw, Taylor turn his eyes slowly toward
my profile, and, as mine swung to meet them, the expression
Lost Continent |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: and there was the lights of the house, too; so we warn't
afeard any more, and was going to climb over, but Tom says:
"Hold on; set down here a minute. By George!"
"What's the matter?" says I.
"Matter enough!" he says. "Wasn't you expecting we
would be the first to tell the family who it is that's
been killed yonder in the sycamores, and all about them
rapscallions that done it, and about the di'monds they've
smouched off of the corpse, and paint it up fine,
and have the glory of being the ones that knows a lot
more about it than anybody else?"
|
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 From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: that the question has no real interest. Later, when we think it
is advisable to return, we will take counsel together. If the
Columbiad is not there, the projectile will be."
"That is a step certainly. A ball without a gun!"
"The gun," replied Barbicane, "can be manufactured. The powder
can be made. Neither metals, saltpeter, nor coal can fail in
the depths of the moon, and we need only go 8,000 leagues in
order to fall upon the terrestrial globe by virtue of the mere
laws of weight."
"Enough," said Michel with animation. "Let it be no longer a
question of returning: we have already entertained it too long.
From the Earth to the Moon |
