| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: fighting began. There was a little two-wheeled cart inscribed
with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer, New Malden,
with a smashed wheel and an abandoned tin trunk; there
was a straw hat trampled into the now hardened mud, and
at the top of West Hill a lot of blood-stained glass about the
overturned water trough. My movements were languid, my
plans of the vaguest. I had an idea of going to Leatherhead,
though I knew that there I had the poorest chance of finding
my wife. Certainly, unless death had overtaken them sud-
denly, my cousins and she would have fled thence; but it
seemed to me I might find or learn there whither the Surrey
War of the Worlds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: waiting,--and we know that it is dead.
IV.
Persistently and furiously, at half-past two o'clock of an August
morning, Sparicio rang Dr. La Brierre's night-bell. He had
fifty dollars in his pocket, and a letter to deliver. He was to
earn another fifty dollars--deposited in Feliu's hands,--by
bringing the Doctor to Viosca's Point. He had risked his life
for that money,--and was terribly in earnest.
Julien descended in his under-clothing, and opened the letter by
the light of the hall lamp. It enclosed a check for a larger fee
than he had ever before received, and contained an urgent request
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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 Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: "Lost?" gasped Wilding, and his conscience pricked him for a moment,
remembering how much it had been his fault - however indirectly - that
Feversham had been forewarned. "But how lost?" he cried a moment later.
"Ask Grey," snapped Trenchard. "Ask his craven, numskulled lordship.
He had as good a hand in losing it as any. Oh, it was all most
infernally mishandled, as has been everything in this ill-starred rising.
Grey sent back Godfrey, the guide, and attempted in the dark to find his
own way across the rhine. He missed the ford. What else could the fool
have hoped? And when he was discovered and Dunbarton's guns began to
play on us - hell and fire! we ran as if Sedgemoor had been a race-course.
"The rest was but the natural sequel. The foot, seeing our confusion,
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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 Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: "Have you seen the play, 'Young America'?"
asked Fothergil, searching for a safe topic of con-
versation.
A little ripple of alarm immediately ruffled the
lakeblue innocence of her eyes.
"If it is a Problem Play, I have not," she said,
"I consider such things dangerous."
"But it isn't, you know," said Fothergil eagerly.
It's a -- a -- it's a perfectly NICE play.
It's about a dog!"
"About a dog!" Her eyebrows went up, and her
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