| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: world--what evils in thy passage into it!--what evils since!--produced into
being, in the decline of thy father's days--when the powers of his
imagination and of his body were waxing feeble--when radical heat and
radical moisture, the elements which should have temper'd thine, were
drying up; and nothing left to found thy stamina in, but negations--'tis
pitiful--brother Toby, at the best, and called out for all the little helps
that care and attention on both sides could give it. But how were we
defeated! You know the event, brother Toby--'tis too melancholy a one to
be repeated now--when the few animal spirits I was worth in the world, and
with which memory, fancy, and quick parts should have been convey'd--were
all dispersed, confused, confounded, scattered, and sent to the devil.--
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: goats, and fowl, and a certain number of huts that were to be
turned over to the visitors. The details having been settled
after an hour or more of that bickering argument of which the
native African is so fond, the newcomers entered the village
where they were assigned to huts.
Bertha Kircher found herself alone in a small hut to the
palisade at the far end of the village street, and though she was
neither bound nor guarded, she was assured by Usanga
that she could not escape the village without running into almost
certain death in the jungle, which the villagers assured them
was infested by lions of great size and ferocity. "Be good to
Tarzan the Untamed |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: grim word they knew; swarms of artificial flies of every
conceivable shade, brown, gray, black, gray-brown, gray-black,
with here and there a brisk vermilion note; coils of line, from
the thickness of a pencil, spun to hold the sullen plunges of a
jew-fish off the Catalina Islands, down to the sea-green gossamers
that a vigorous fingerling might snap; hooks, snells, guts,
leaders, gaffs, cartridges, shells, and all the entrancing
munitions of the sportsman, that savored of lonely canons, deer-
licks, mountain streams, quail uplands, and the still reaches of
inlet and marsh grounds, gray and cool in the early autumn dawn.
|
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 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: sternness -- "it is not granted me to pardon. I have no such
power as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes
back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By
thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since
that moment it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have
wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion;
neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from
his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it
may! Now, go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man. "
He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment of
The Scarlet Letter |
