| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: said Sir Andrew, rousing himself from his meditations, "you and
Hastings, certainly; and I hope you may have as pleasant a task as I
had, and as charming a travelling companion. You have no idea,
Tony. . . ."
"No! I haven't," interrupted his friend pleasantly, "but I'll
take your word for it. And now," he added, whilst a sudden
earnestness crept over his jovial young face, "how about business?"
The two young men drew their chairs closer together, and
instinctively, though they were alone, their voices sank to a whisper.
"I saw the Scarlet Pimpernel alone, for a few moments in
Calais," said Sir Andrew, "a day or two ago. He crossed over to
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: give Menexenus a rest, so I turned to him and said, I think, Lysis, that
what you say is true, and that, if we had been right, we should never have
gone so far wrong; let us proceed no further in this direction (for the
road seems to be getting troublesome), but take the other path into which
we turned, and see what the poets have to say; for they are to us in a
manner the fathers and authors of wisdom, and they speak of friends in no
light or trivial manner, but God himself, as they say, makes them and draws
them to one another; and this they express, if I am not mistaken, in the
following words:--
'God is ever drawing like towards like, and making them acquainted.'
I dare say that you have heard those words.
Lysis |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: fact not lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway
looking after her with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is
that she was conscious of a somewhat keen shock of
disappointment. All her plans for the day had been built on the
assumption that it was to see her that Selden had come to
Bellomont. She had expected, when she came down stairs, to
find him on the watch for her; and she had found him, instead, in
a situation which might well denote that he had been on the watch
for another lady. Was it possible, after all, that he had come
for Bertha Dorset? The latter had acted on the assumption to the
extent of appearing at an hour when she never showed herself to
|
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 Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Perry and Dian and I were so full of questions that
we fairly burst, but we had to contain ourselves for
a while, since the battle with the rest of Hooja's fleet
had scarce commenced. From the small forward decks
of the feluccas Perry's crude cannon were belching
smoke, flame, thunder, and death. The air trembled
to the roar of them. Hooja's horde, intrepid, savage
fighters that they were, were closing in to grapple
in a last death-struggle with the Mezops who manned
our vessels.
The handling of our fleet by the red island warriors
Pellucidar |
