| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: been one sickly weed before, I nourished two healthy
ones. When I found a particularly promising variety of
weed growing elsewhere than among my melons,
I forthwith dug it up and transplanted it among my
charges.
My masters did not seem to realize my perfidy. They
saw me always laboring diligently in the melon-patch,
and as time enters not into the reckoning of Pellucidar-
ians--even of human beings and much less of brutes
and half brutes--I might have lived on indefinitely
through this subterfuge had not that occurred which
Pellucidar |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: and a half we sat talking. I told her of Daphne and the others.
She told me of her mother and sisters and how her brother had
cared for the Abbey since her father's death. It was true that
the family was away. She was alone there, save for her eldest
sister's child- Roy. Next month she would go to London.
"Where I may come and see you?"
"I should be very hurt if you didn't. It's going to be rather
nice."
"It is," I said with conviction.
"I meant the season. I'll enjoy it all. The dances and
theatres, Ranelagh, Ascot, Lord's, the Horse Show and everything.
The Brother of Daphne |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: used that phrase--that there was no nonsense about
him, that he was a thoroughly manly fellow and
old-fashioned at that, that he didn't profess to know much,
and that what he did not know was not worth knowing
He made a manly bow, ostentatiously free from obsequiousness
and passed.
"I am glad to see that type endures," said Graham
"Phonographs and kinematographs," said Lincoln,
a little spitefully. "He has studied from the life."
Graham glanced at the burly form again. It was oddly
reminiscent.
When the Sleeper Wakes |
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 Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes: arms into the straps, and spur at each other so violently that
each sends his lance two arms' length through his opponent's
shield, causing the lance to split and splinter like a flying
spark. And the horses meet head on, clashing breast to breast,
and the shields and helmets crash with such a noise that it seems
like a mighty thunder-clap; not a breast-strap, girth, rein or
surcingle remains unbroken, and the saddle-bows, though strong,
are broken to pieces. The combatants felt no shame in falling to
earth, in view of their mishaps, but they quickly spring to their
feet, and without waste of threatening words rush at each other
more fiercely than two wild boars, and deal great blows with
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