| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Not for her face, but for something fairer,
Something diviner, I thought, than beauty:
I loved the spirit -- the human something
That seemed to chime with my own condition,
And make soul-music when we were together;
And we were never apart, from the moment
My eyes flashed into her eyes the message
That swept itself in a quivering answer
Back through my strange lost being. My pulses
Leapt with an aching speed; and the measure
Of this great world grew small and smaller,
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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 Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: target for the samurai and three of the heavy shafts had
pierced his body. Two were buried in his chest and one in his
abdomen.
Anthony Harding was horrified. Both his companions were
down, and the savages were pressing closely on toward their
hiding place. Mallory sat upon the ground trying to tear the
spear from his leg. Finally he was successful. Byrne, still
conscious, called to Harding to pull the three shafts from him.
"What are we to do?" cried the older man. "They will get
us again as sure as fate."
"They haven't got us yet," said Billy. "Wait, I got a scheme.
The Mucker |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: "Half an hour," she said, looking wistfully out to sea, "half
an hour more and you'll be far from me, Armand! Oh! I can't believe
that you are going, dear! These last few days--whilst Percy has been
away, and I've had you all to myself, have slipped by like a dream."
"I am not going far, sweet one," said the young man gently, "a
narrow channel to cross-a few miles of road--I can soon come back."
"Nay, `tis not the distance, Armand--but that awful Paris. . .
just now. . ."
They had reached the edge of the cliff. The gentle sea-breeze
blew Marguerite's hair about her face, and sent the ends of her soft
lace fichu waving round her, like a white and supple snake. She tried
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
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 Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: "And now that the lottery is abolished?" asked Gazonal.
"Oh! now she has a nephew for whom she is hoarding."
When they reached the Vieille rue du Temple the three friends entered
one of the oldest houses in that street and passed up a shaking
staircase, the steps of which, caked with mud, led them in semi-
darkness, and through a stench peculiar to houses on an alley, to the
third story, where they beheld a door which painting alone could
render; literature would have to spend too many nights in suitably
describing it.
An old woman, in keeping with that door, and who might have been that
door in human guise, ushered the three friends into a room which
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