| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: and in the darkness I could not see to replace it. Suddenly a
hand reached out and pulled the fur over me, shortly afterwards
adding another to my covering.
I presumed that my watchful guardian was Sola, nor was
I wrong. This girl alone, among all the green Martians with
whom I came in contact, disclosed characteristics of sympathy,
kindliness, and affection; her ministrations to my bodily wants
were unfailing, and her solicitous care saved me from much
suffering and many hardships.
As I was to learn, the Martian nights are extremely cold,
and as there is practically no twilight or dawn, the changes
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: though she said nothing. When her mother came in from those
wonderful foraging expeditions in search of late pease or corn,
she could see the swollen circle round the eyes, and hear her
breath like that of a child which has sobbed itself tired. Then,
one night, when she had gone into her mother's room, after she
was in bed, the blue eyes were set in a wild, hopeless way, as if
staring down into years of starvation and misery. The fire on
the hearth burned low and clear; the old worn furniture stood out
cheerfully in the red glow, and threw a maze of twisted shadow on
the floor. But the glow was all that was cheerful. To-morrow,
when the hard daylight should jeer away the screening shadows, it
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with
the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find
it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the
emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a
new social science, after new social laws, that are to create
these conditions.
Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive
action, historically created conditions of emancipation to
fantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous class-organisation
of the proletariat to the organisation of society specially
contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in
The Communist Manifesto |
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 Juana by Honore de Balzac: brown, even the faces. Between the shop and this living-room, so fine
in color and in its tone of patriarchal life, was a dark staircase
leading to a ware-room where the light, carefully distributed,
permitted the examination of goods. Above this were the apartments of
the merchant and his wife. Rooms for an apprentice and a servant-woman
were in a garret under the roof, which projected over the street and
was supported by buttresses, giving a somewhat fantastic appearance to
the exterior of the building. These chambers were now taken by the
merchant and his wife who gave up their own rooms to the officer who
was billeted upon them,--probably because they wished to avoid all
quarrelling.
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