| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: The jeweled fingers grasped my shoulders nervously, and her slim body
quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her eyes,
in an abandonment of pleading despair. Then I remembered the fate
of the man in whose room we stood.
"You lured Cadby to his death," I said, and shook her off.
"No, no!" she cried wildly, clutching at me. "No, I swear by the holy name
I did not! I did not! I watched him, spied upon him--yes! But, listen:
it was because he would not be warned that he met his death.
I could not save him! Ah, I am not so bad as that. I will tell you.
I have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them.
Look! in the grate. The book was too big to steal away.
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: lassitudine, vi fluminis oppressi perierunt. Nostri ad unum omnes
incolumes, perpaucis vulneratis, ex tanti belli timore, cum hostium
numerus capitum CCCCXXX milium fuisset, se in castra receperunt. Caesar
iis quos in castris retinuerat discedendi potestatem fecit. Illi
supplicia cruciatusque Gallorum veriti, quorum agros vexaverant, remanere
se apud eum velle dixerunt. His Caesar libertatem concessit.
Germanico bello confecto multis de causis Caesar statuit sibi Rhenum
esse transeundum; quarum illa fuit iustissima quod, cum videret Germanos
tam facile impelli ut in Galliam venirent, suis quoque rebus eos timere
voluit, cum intellegerent et posse et audere populi Romani exercitum
Rhenum transire. Accessit etiam quod illa pars equitatus Usipetum et
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| 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: as long as I am with you I have nothing to fear; but if I came home
alone and a scoundrel were to follow me, I should be profitable to
kill."
"Have you much with you?"
"No, not much," said the wary Italian, "only my winnings. But they
would make a pretty fortune for a beggar and turn him into an honest
man for the rest of his life."
Diard led the marquis along a lonely street where he remembered to
have seen a house, the door of which was at the end of an avenue of
trees with high and gloomy walls on either side of it. When they
reached this spot he coolly invited the marquis to precede him; but as
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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 Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: she went, and took the young one too. The fellow wrote me they didn't
touch another thing: they left the shawls and dresses I gave them kicking
about the huts, and went off naked with only their blankets and the
ammunition on their heads. A nigger man met them twenty miles off, and he
said they were skooting up for Lo Magundi's country as fast as they could
go.
"And do you know," said Peter, striking his knee, and looking impressively
across the fire at the stranger; "what I'm as sure of as that I'm sitting
here? It's that that nigger I caught at my hut, that day, was her nigger
husband! He'd come to fetch her that time; and when she saw she couldn't
get away without our catching her, she got the cartridges for him!" Peter
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