| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the speed of even these, and the first stride of the
mare found her overhauled, with a savage beast at her
shoulder. She turned, biting and kicking at her foe.
Her mate hesitated for an instant, as though about to
rush to her assistance; but a backward glance revealed
to him the flying heels of the balance of the herd, and
with a snort and a shake of his head he wheeled and
dashed away.
Clinging with one hand to the short mane of his quarry,
Tarzan struck again and again with his knife at the
unprotected heart. The result had, from the first,
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |
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 Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: society. But there is no more treacherous water, they say, than still
water, just as there was nothing less proper and well-behaved than the
calm and peaceable Rosinante on the occasion referred to.
At any rate, while making the tour of his town according to his
laudable official habit, Beauvisage from the top of the bridge chanced
to catch sight of the fair Parisian who with outstretched arms and
gracefully bent body was pursuing her favorite pastime. A slight
movement, the charming impatience with which the pretty fisher
twitched her line from the water when the fish had not bitten, was
perhaps the electric shock which struck upon the heart of the
magistrate, hitherto irreproachable. No one can say, perhaps, how the
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