| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: was to procure assistance from the Indies, and that I should
certainly return at the head of an army. The patriarch's advice
upon this emergency was that I should retire into the woods, and by
some other road join the nine Jesuits who were gone towards Mazna.
I could think of no better expedient, and therefore went away in the
night between the 23rd and 24th of April with my comrade, an old
man, very infirm and very timorous. We crossed woods never crossed,
I believe, by any before: the darkness of the night and the
thickness of the shade spread a kind of horror round us; our gloomy
journey was still more incommoded by the brambles and thorns, which
tore our hands; amidst all these difficulties I applied myself to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: or pulmonary, to stand in his way--that is the line I am astonished
he did not take,--or he might, had he been man enough, have
declared simply and finally that he did not intend to do the thing.
But the fact is, though the dread was hugely present in his mind,
the thing was by no means sharp and clear. I fancy that all through
this period he kept telling himself that when the occasion came
he would find himself equal to it. He was like a man just gripped
by a great illness, who says he feels a little out of sorts, and expects
to be better presently. Meanwhile he delayed the completion of
the machine, and let the assumption that he was going to fly it
take root and flourish exceedingly about him. He even accepted
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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 Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: she awoke with hope, and each night she was a prey to despondency.
She was tempted to seek him out. But far from yielding to the impulse,
she avoided any occasion which might throw her in his way. She did not
go to Mademoiselle Reisz's nor pass by Madame Lebrun's, as she might
have done if he had still been in Mexico.
When Arobin, one night, urged her to drive with him, she
went--out to the lake, on the Shell Road. His horses were full of
mettle, and even a little unmanageable. She liked the rapid gait
at which they spun along, and the quick, sharp sound of the horses'
hoofs on the hard road. They did not stop anywhere to eat or to
drink. Arobin was not needlessly imprudent. But they ate and they
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
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 Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included. Therefore, we do NOT keep these books
in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise.
Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
CHAPTER I
Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a
little anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that
time, like a comet. LIKE a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the
lot of them! Of course there warn't any of them going my way, as a
steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like
the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart
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