| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: unique. Clearly she was intent on a body garment, for now and
then she picked up the flannel and held it to her. Having thus,
as one may say, got the line of the thing, she proceeded to cut
again, jaw tight set, small veins on her forehead swelling, a
small replica of Peter Byrne sewing a button on his coat.
After a time it became clear to her that her method was wrong.
She rolled up the flannel viciously and flung it into a corner,
and proceeded to her Sunday morning occupation of putting away
the garments she had worn during the week, a vast and motley
collection.
On the irritability of her mood Harmony's music had a late 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 The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: And my bethrothed. 'You do us, Prince,' he said,
Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,
'All honour. We remember love ourselves
In our sweet youth: there did a compact pass
Long summers back, a kind of ceremony--
I think the year in which our olives failed.
I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart,
With my full heart: but there were widows here,
Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;
They fed her theories, in and out of place
Maintaining that with equal husbandry
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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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: black cliffs of the Rheinstein, while the broad Rhine beneath
flashed blood-red in the blaze of the lightning and the fires of
the Mausenthurm - a lurid Acheron above which seemed to hover ten
thousand unburied ghosts; and last, but not least, on the lip of
the vast Mosel-kopf crater - just above the point where the weight
of the fiery lake has burst the side of the great slag-cup, and
rushed forth between two cliffs of clink-stone across the downs, in
a clanging stream of fire, damming up rivulets, and blasting its
path through forests, far away toward the valley of the Moselle -
the sight of an object for which was forgotten for the moment that
battle-field of the Titans at our feet, and the glorious panorama,
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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 Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: a time before, and naturally expected to see the young man
murdered as had been the huge sailor earlier in the day.
So Tarzan fitted a poisoned arrow to his bow and drew a
bead upon the rat-faced sailor, but the foliage was so thick
that he soon saw the arrow would be deflected by the leaves
or some small branch, and instead he launched a heavy spear
from his lofty perch.
Clayton had taken but a dozen steps. The rat-faced sailor
had half drawn his revolver; the other sailors stood watching
the scene intently.
Professor Porter had already disappeared into the jungle,
Tarzan of the Apes |
