| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: could contrive.
Home, after my father's death, had become a very quiet and
uneventful place indeed. My mother had either an unimaginative
temperament or her mind was greatly occupied with private religious
solicitudes, and I remember her talking to me but little, and that
usually upon topics I was anxious to evade. I had developed my own
view about low-Church theology long before my father's death, and my
meditation upon that event had finished my secret estrangement from
my mother's faith. My reason would not permit even a remote chance
of his being in hell, he was so manifestly not evil, and this
religion would not permit him a remote chance of being out yet.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: crest of one of the hills. He had caused his car to be
placed there, with the tents and luggage of many of
his leaders, under a small guard, so that the banners
there displayed, together with the car, led the King of
the Romans to believe that the Earl himself lay there,
for Simon de Montfort had but a month or so before
suffered an injury to his hip, when his horse fell with
him, and the royalists were not aware that he had re-
covered sufficiently to again mount a horse.
And so it was that the forces under the King of the
Romans pushed back the men of Henry de Montfort,
The Outlaw of Torn |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: being kept a prisoner by his wife, is too far away from
anyone to bother either of you tin men in any way. If
you hadn't gone where he is and discovered him, you
would never have worried about him."
"What do you care, anyhow," Betsy Bobbin asked the
Tin Woodman, "so long as Nimmie Amee is satisfied?"
"And just to think," remarked Tiny Trot, "that any
girl would rather live with a mixture like Chopfyt, on
far-away Mount Munch, than to be the Empress of the
Winkies!"
"It is her own choice," said the Tin Woodman
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
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 Kenilworth by Walter Scott: nobles, and in presence of my own wedded lord, that I should
acknowledge him--HIM there--that very cloak-brushing, shoe-
cleaning fellow--HIM there, my lord's lackey, for my liege lord
and husband; furnishing against myself, Great God! whenever I
was to vindicate my right and my rank, such weapons as would hew
my just claim from the root, and destroy my character to be
regarded as an honourable matron of the English nobility!"
"You hear her, Foster, and you, young maiden, hear this lady,"
answered Varney, taking advantage of the pause which the Countess
had made in her charge, more for lack of breath than for lack of
matter--"you hear that her heat only objects to me the course
Kenilworth |
