| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: With a quick backward glance the Englishman, clinging firmly to
the ladder with both hands, drew up his free foot and with all
the strength of a powerful leg, planted a heavy shoe squarely in
the flat face of the Wieroo that held him. Shrieking horribly,
the creature clapped both hands to its face and sank to the
ground while Bradley clambered quickly the remaining distance to
the roof, though no sooner did he reach the top of the ladder
than a great flapping of wings beneath him warned him that the
Wieroos were rising after him. A moment later they swarmed about
his head as he ran for the apartment in which he had spent the
early hours of the morning after his arrival.
Out of Time's Abyss |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: dominates the court, and, typically, is spurred and red-tabbed.
(It was just at this time that the spurs were most on my
nerves.)
This inner Britain, I went on to explain, holds tenaciously to
its positions of advantage, from which it is difficult to
dislodge it without upsetting the whole empire, and it insists
upon treating the rest of the four hundred millions who
constitute that empire as outsiders, foreigners, subject races
and suspected persons.
"To you," I said, "it bears itself with an appearance of faintly
hostile, faintly contemptuous apathy. It is still so entirely
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: dreary room, for, fifteen years ago, it was entered by a new
presiding spirit.
"Now, father," said Nancy, "_is_ there any call for you to go
home to tea? Mayn't you just as well stay with us?--such a
beautiful evening as it's likely to be."
The old gentleman had been talking with Godfrey about the increasing
poor-rate and the ruinous times, and had not heard the dialogue
between his daughters.
"My dear, you must ask Priscilla," he said, in the once firm
voice, now become rather broken. "She manages me and the farm
too."
Silas Marner |
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 Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: out his light and got into bed. It had occurred to him that the
milkman's flivver, driving in at the break of dawn, would encounter
considerable glass.
By morning, after a bad night, he had made a sort of double-headed
resolution, that he was through with booze, as he termed it, and
that he would find out how he stood with Elizabeth. But for a day
or two no opportunity presented itself. When he called there was
always present some grave-faced sympathizing visitor, dark clad
and low of voice, and over the drawing-room would hang the
indescribable hush of a house in mourning. It seemed to touch
Elizabeth, too, making her remote and beyond earthly things. He
The Breaking Point |
