| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: who can enforce it."
"Mawd, sweet Mawd," said the baron, "will you then forsake
your poor old father in his distress, with his castle in ashes,
and his enemy in power?"
"Not so, father," said Marian; "I will always be your true daughter:
I will always love, and serve, and watch, and defend you: but neither
will I forsake my plighted love, and my own liege lord, who was your
choice before he was mine, for you made him my associate in infancy;
and that he continued to be mine when he ceased to be yours, does not
in any way show remissness in my duties or falling off in my affections.
And though I here plight my troth at the altar to Robin, in the presence
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Cruise of the Jasper B. by Don Marquis: refusing to remain behind, went with them. Moving lights and a
stir of activity at Morris's, and the gleam of lanterns on board
the Annabel Lee, showed Cleggett that his neighbors likewise were
excited.
But if Cleggett had expected an easy solution of this astonishing
eruption he was disappointed. Arrived at the scene of the
explosion, he found that its nature was such as to tease and balk
his faculties of analysis. The blast had blown a hole into the
ground, certainly; but this hole was curiously filled. Two large
bowlders that leaned towards each other had stood on top of the
ground. These had been split and shattered into many fragments.
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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 The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: their first kill; I was armed only with my knife. About me was
a strange landscape--the flowers, the trees, the grasses, even,
were different from those of my northern world, and presently
there appeared before me a creature fully as hideous as the
Wieroo--a hairy manthing that barely walked erect. I shuddered,
and then I fled. Through the hideous dangers that my forebears
had endured in the earlier stages of their human evolution I
fled; and always pursuing was the hairy monster that had
discovered me. Later he was joined by others of his kind.
They were the speechless men, the Alus, from whom you rescued
me, my Tom. From then on, you know the story of my adventures,
The People That Time Forgot |
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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: Lord in these valleys, he went on to tell me; not many, but a few.
'Many are called.' he quoted, 'and few chosen.'
'My father,' said I, 'it is not easy to say who know the Lord; and
it is none of our business. Protestants and Catholics, and even
those who worship stones, may know Him and be known by Him; for He
has made all.'
I did not know I was so good a preacher.
The old man assured me he thought as I did, and repeated his
expressions of pleasure at meeting me. 'We are so few,' he said.
'They call us Moravians here; but down in the Department of Gard,
where there are also a good number, they are called Derbists, after
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