| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: that had threatened him.
Nor shall you think him a coward, for you must remember he was
hardly sixteen years old at the time, and that this was the first
affair of the sort he had encountered. Afterward, as you shall
learn, he showed that he could exhibit courage enough at a pinch.
While he stood there, endeavoring to recover his composure, the
while the tumult continued within, suddenly two men came running
almost together out of the door, a crowd of the combatants at
their heels. The first of these men was Captain Sylvia; the
other, who was pursuing him, was Captain Morgan.
As the crowd about the door parted before the sudden appearing of
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: stroke.
This excursion through the coal mine lasted till night. My uncle
scarcely could restrain his impatience at the horizontal road. The
darkness, always deep twenty yards before us, prevented us from
estimating the length of the gallery; and I was beginning to think it
must be endless, when suddenly at six o'clock a wall very
unexpectedly stood before us. Right or left, top or bottom, there was
no road farther; we were at the end of a blind alley. "Very well,
it's all right!" cried my uncle, "now, at any rate, we shall know
what we are about. We are not in Saknussemm's road, and all we have
to do is to go back. Let us take a night's rest, and in three days we
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: how one seemed to hang through those lunar leaps. In each suspense I
sought Cavor, and marvelled why he should be hidden. In each leap I could
feel the sun setting behind me. Each time I touched the ground I was
tempted to go back.
A last leap and I was in the depression below our handkerchief, a stride,
and I stood on our former vantage point within arms' reach of it. I stood
up straight and scanned the world about me, between its lengthening bars
of shadow. Far away, down a long declivity, was the opening of the tunnel
up which we had fled, and my shadow reached towards it, stretched towards
it, and touched it, like a finger of the night.
Not a sign of Cavor, not a sound in all the stillness, only the stir and
The First Men In The Moon |
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 Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: black fellow; and then he touched a spring in the thunderbox, and
out popped turnip-ghosts and magic-lanthorns and pasteboard bogies
and spring-heeled Jacks, and sallaballas, with such a horrid din,
clatter, clank, roll, rattle, and roar, that the little boy turned
up the whites of his eyes, and fainted right away.
And at that his poor heathen papa and mamma were as much delighted
as if they had found a gold mine; and fell down upon their knees
before the Powwow man, and gave him a palanquin with a pole of
solid silver and curtains of cloth of gold; and carried him about
in it on their own backs: but as soon as they had taken him up,
the pole stuck to their shoulders, and they could not set him down
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