| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: servant?"
"Yes, Neb," replied the engineer, smiling. "But you must not be jealous."
"And I hope he will make an excellent servant," added Herbert. "He
appears young, and will be easy to educate, and we shall not be obliged to
use force to subdue him, nor draw his teeth, as is sometimes done. He will
soon grow fond of his masters if they are kind to him."
"And they will be," replied Pencroft, who had forgotten all his rancor
against "the jokers."
Then, approaching the orang,--
"Well, old boy!" he asked, "how are you?"
The orang replied by a little grunt which did not show any anger.
The Mysterious Island |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: her; and the Father of the Gods himself had been too fond of the
daughters of men. The two most deeply suggestive figures of Greek
Mythology were, for religion, Demeter, an Earth Goddess, not one of
the Olympians, and for art, Dionysus, the son of a mortal woman to
whom the moment of his birth had proved also the moment of her
death.
But Life itself from its lowliest and most humble sphere produced
one far more marvellous than the mother of Proserpina or the son of
Semele. Out of the Carpenter's shop at Nazareth had come a
personality infinitely greater than any made by myth and legend,
and one, strangely enough, destined to reveal to the world the
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Coming home from the theater tonight, still dazed with the
revelation of what I am capable of, once aroused, I asked Miss
Everett if her couzin had said anything about Mr. Egleston being in
love with the Leading Character. She observed:
"No. But he may be. She is very pretty."
"Possably," I remarked. "But I should like to see her in the
morning, when she gets up."
All the girls were perfectly mad about Mr. Egleston, although
pretending merely to admire his Art. But I am being honest, as I
agreed at the start, and now I know, as I sit here with the soft,
although chilly breeses of the night blowing on my hot brow, now I
|
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 Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: noses of Rabelais and Socrates; a laughing, wrinkled mouth; a short
chin boldly chiselled and garnished with a gray beard cut into a
point; sea-green eyes, faded perhaps by age, but whose pupils,
contrasting with the pearl-white balls on which they floated, cast at
times magnetic glances of anger or enthusiasm. The face in other
respects was singularly withered and worn by the weariness of old age,
and still more, it would seem, by the action of thoughts which had
undermined both soul and body. The eyes had lost their lashes, and the
eyebrows were scarcely traced along the projecting arches where they
belonged. Imagine such a head upon a lean and feeble body, surround it
with lace of dazzling whiteness worked in meshes like a fish-slice,
|
