| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: more head than heart, but that's well enough. And with your
temper under control, you're a CAPABLE young woman."
"What has Mr. Dick been up to now?" I asked, growing suspicious.
"Nothing. But I'm an old man, Minnie, a very old man."
"Stuff and nonsense," I exclaimed, alarmed. "You're only
seventy. That's what comes of saying in the advertising that you
are eighty--to show what the springs have done for you. It's
enough to make a man die of senility to have ten years tacked to
his age."
"And if," he went on, "if anything happens to me, Minnie, I'm
counting on you to do what you can for the old place. You've
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Barsoom whispered: "My chieftain!" and pressed her lips to the
lips of Turan, the common panthan.
CHAPTER XXII
AT THE MOMENT OF MARRIAGE
THE silence of the tomb lay heavy about him as O-Tar, Jeddak of
Manator, opened his eyes in the chamber of O-Mai. Recollection of
the frightful apparition that had confronted him swept to his
consciousness. He listened, but heard naught. Within the range of
his vision there was nothing apparent that might cause alarm.
Slowly he lifted his head and looked about. Upon the floor beside
the couch lay the thing that had at first attracted his attention
The Chessmen of Mars |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: Formerly, in France, Spain, and Italy, when those three countries had,
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mutual interests which
united and disunited them by perpetual warfare, the name Marana served
to express in its general sense, a prostitute. In those days women of
that sort had a certain rank in the world of which nothing in our day
can give an idea. Ninon de l'Enclos and Marian Delorme have alone
played, in France, the role of the Imperias, Catalinas, and Maranas
who, in preceding centuries, gathered around them the cassock, gown,
and sword. An Imperia built I forget which church in Rome in a frenzy
of repentance, as Rhodope built, in earlier times, a pyramid in Egypt.
The name Marana, inflicted at first as a disgrace upon the singular
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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 Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: saying that I neither understood the subjects whereof I discoursed
nor believed the things that I said, being both silly and
pretentious. It would have been a pity if it had been true. There
was also one Leigh Hunt, a maker of many books, who used one day a
bottle of ink whereof the gall was transfused into his blood, so
that he wrote many hard words of me, setting forth selfishness and
cruelty and hypocrisy as if they were qualities of my disposition.
God knew, even then, whether these things were true of me; and if
they were not true, it would have been a pity to have answered them;
but it would have been still more a pity to be angered by them. But
since that time Master Hunt and I have met each other; yes, and
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