| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: the devoted scouts with the heliographs that were presently
to warn the gunners of the Martian approach. But the Mar-
tians now understood our command of artillery and the
danger of human proximity, and not a man ventured within
a mile of either cylinder, save at the price of his life.
It would seem that these giants spent the earlier part of
the afternoon in going to and fro, transferring everything
from the second and third cylinders--the second in Addle-
stone Golf Links and the third at Pyrford--to their original
pit on Horsell Common. Over that, above the blackened
heather and ruined buildings that stretched far and wide,
 War of the Worlds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: herself had always acknowledged it, even in their last dreadful
talk together; and once he had gloried in her frankness. How
could he ever have imagined that, to have her fill of these
things, she would not in time stoop lower than she had yet
stooped? Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might be
saving her. At any rate, the taste of the past was now so
bitter to him that he was moved to thank whatever gods there
were for pushing that mortuary paragraph under his eye ....
"Susy, dear [he wrote], the fates seem to have taken our future
in hand, and spared us the trouble of unravelling it. If I have
sometimes been selfish enough to forget the conditions on which
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