| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: shops?"
"Would you like me to show you? But you don't understand such
things."
"Oh, do show me! I've been learning about them at those--what's
their names?...the bankers...they've some splendid engravings.
They showed them to us."
"Why, have you been at the Schuetzburgs?" asked the hostess from
the samovar.
"Yes, ma chere. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and told
us thesauce at that dinner cost a hundred pounds," Princess
Myakaya said, speaking loudly, and conscious everyone was
Anna Karenina |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: detail, because it seemed to reveal the state of mind of the
remarkable personage who now stood before me. Apparently he had not
then been animated by sentiments hostile to humanity. He was content
to await the future; though his attitude undeniably revealed the
immeasurable confidence which he had in his own genius. the immense
pride which his almost superhuman powers had aroused within him.
It was not astonishing, moreover, that this haughtiness had little by
little been aggravated to such a degree that he now presumed to
enslave the entire world, as his public letter had suggested by its
significant threats. His vehement mind had with time been roused to
such over-excitement that he might easily be driven into the most
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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 The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: prey upon the clergy had given rise to an idea in the
boy's mind, which had been revolving in a nebulous
way within the innermost recesses of his subconscious-
ness since his vanquishing of the three knights had
brought him, so easily, such riches in the form of horses,
arms, armor and gold. As was always his wont in his
after life, to think was to act.
"With The Black Wolf dead, and may the devil pull
out his eyes with red hot tongs, we might look farther
and fare worse, mates, in search of a chief," spoke Red
Shandy, eyeing his fellows, "for verily any man, be he
The Outlaw of Torn |
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 Critias by Plato: the Eridanus and Ilissus, and included the Pnyx on one side, and the
Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite side to the Pnyx, and was all well
covered with soil, and level at the top, except in one or two places.
Outside the Acropolis and under the sides of the hill there dwelt artisans,
and such of the husbandmen as were tilling the ground near; the warrior
class dwelt by themselves around the temples of Athene and Hephaestus at
the summit, which moreover they had enclosed with a single fence like the
garden of a single house. On the north side they had dwellings in common
and had erected halls for dining in winter, and had all the buildings which
they needed for their common life, besides temples, but there was no
adorning of them with gold and silver, for they made no use of these for
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