| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: in numerous little ways such as these that he differed from
other men, due, probably, to his early jungle training. The
beasts of the jungle that he had been reared among were
playful to maturity but seldom thereafter. His fellow-apes,
especially the bulls, became fierce and surly as they grew
older. Life was a serious matter during lean seasons -- one had
to fight to secure one's share of food then, and the habit once
formed became lifelong. Hunting for food was the life labor
of the jungle bred, and a life labor is a thing not to be ap-
proached with levity nor prosecuted lightly. So all work
found Tarzan serious, though he still retained what the other
Tarzan the Untamed |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: of Blondet's head, "you are making up for lost time over the
champagne!"
"Oh! by the sacred name of shareholder, get on with your story!" cried
Couture.
"I was within an ace of it," retorted Bixiou, "but you with your
profanity have brought me to the climax."
"Then, are there shareholders in the tale?" inquired Finot.
"Yes; rich as rich can be--like yours."
"It seems to me," Finot began stiffly, "that some consideration is
owing to a good fellow to whom you look for a bill for five hundred
francs upon occasion----"
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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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: their winter parliamentary campaign of 1851, had they but found this
"Responsibility law" ready made, and framed at that, by the suspicious,
the vicious republican Assembly!
After, on January 29, 1849, the constitutive assembly had itself broken
its last weapon, the Barrot ministry and the "Friends of Order" harassed
it to death, left nothing undone to humiliate it, and wrung from its
weakness, despairing of itself, laws that cost it the last vestige of
respect with the public. Bonaparte, occupied with his own fixed
Napoleonic idea, was audacious enough openly to exploit this degradation
of the parliamentary power: When the National Assembly, on May 8, 1849,
passed a vote of censure upon the Ministry on account of the occupation
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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 Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: I slept, feeling his eyes above my sleep.
There on the ship with wines and olives laden,
Led by the stars to far invisible ports,
Egypt and islands of the inner seas,
Love came to me, and Cercolas was love.
RIVERS TO THE SEA
III ¹
The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moon-wise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower-face
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