| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: so they came on, yelling like devils and stopping momentarily
to fire upon the rash white man who stood so perfect a target
before them.
But their haste spoiled their marksmanship. The bullets
zinged and zipped against the rocky little fortress, they nicked
Billy's shirt and trousers and hat, and all the while he stood
there pumping lead into his assailants--not hysterically; but
with the cool deliberation of a butcher slaughtering beeves.
One by one the Pimans dropped until but a single Indian
rushed frantically upon the white man, and then the last of
the assailants lunged forward across the breastwork with a
The Mucker |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: itself in this retreating motion before the last February-barricade is
cleared away, and the first governmental authority of the revolution has
been constituted.
The period we now have before us embraces the motliest jumble of crying
contradictions: constitutionalists, who openly conspire against the
Constitution; revolutionists, who admittedly are constitutional; a
National Assembly that wishes to be omnipotent yet remains
parliamentary; a Mountain, that finds its occupation in submission, that
parries its present defeats with prophecies of future victories;
royalists, who constitute the "patres conscripti" of the republic, and
are compelled by the situation to uphold abroad the hostile monarchic
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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 Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: at half-mast, had directed his course towards the little craft.
Phileas Fogg, after paying the stipulated price of his passage to
John Busby, and rewarding that worthy with the additional sum of
five hundred and fifty pounds, ascended the steamer with Aouda
and Fix; and they started at once for Nagasaki and Yokohama.
They reached their destination on the morning of the 14th of November.
Phileas Fogg lost no time in going on board the Carnatic, where he learned,
to Aouda's great delight--and perhaps to his own, though he betrayed
no emotion--that Passepartout, a Frenchman, had really arrived on her
the day before.
The San Francisco steamer was announced to leave that very evening,
Around the World in 80 Days |
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 Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: with the whale-ships, nor the berg-bound winter I spent by the
Mackenzie. Afterward, in the spring, when the days lengthened and
there was a crust to the snow, we came south, Passuk and I, to the
Country of the Yukon. A weary journey, but the sun pointed out
the way of our feet. It was a naked land then, as I have said,
and we worked up the current, with pole and paddle, till we came
to Forty Mile. Good it was to see white faces once again, so we
put into the bank. And that winter was a hard winter. The
darkness and the cold drew down upon us, and with them the famine.
To each man the agent of the Company gave forty pounds of flour
and twenty of bacon. There were no beans. And, the dogs howled
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