| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: one of the shafts in the shoulder, and so heavily had the
weapon been hurled that it bore him backward to the ground.
Smith-Oldwick fired his pistol twice when he too was struck
down, the weapon entering his right leg midway between hip
and knee. Only Otobu remained to face the enemy, for the
Englishman, already weak from his wounds and from the
latest mauling he had received at the claws of the lion, had lost
consciousness as he sank to the ground with this new hurt.
As he fell his pistol dropped from his fingers, and the girl,
seeing, snatched it up. As Tarzan struggled to rise, one of the
warriors leaped full upon his breast and bore him back as, with
Tarzan the Untamed |
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 Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: the memory of whole months of fretfulness and unkindness in one
short hour when he chose to display for them the ever-new
treasures of his pinchbeck tenderness and charm of manner--a
system of paternity that yielded him an infinitely better return
than his own father's indulgence had formerly gained. At length
his bodily infirmities reached a point when the task of laying
him in bed became as difficult as the navigation of a felucca in
the perils of an intricate channel. Then came the day of his
death; and this brilliant sceptic, whose mental faculties alone
had survived the most dreadful of all destructions, found himself
between his two special antipathies--the doctor and the
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