| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]: set up a tremendous squawking. It was rather a comical situation, and the
children laughed till their sides ached, but after a while it ceased to be so
funny. The clouds were rolling up blacker, and there was an occasional flash
of lightning far off in the distance, but Barney stood still obdurate and
unmoved, simply revelling in the sensation of the cool water, running
down-stream against his four little donkey-legs. At last Rudolph was at his
wits' end, for what did Tattine and Mabel do but commence to cry. Great drops
of rain were falling now, and they COULD NOT BEAR THE THOUGHT of being mid-way
in that stream with the storm breaking right above their heads, and when
girls, little or big, young or old, cannot bear the thought of things they
cry. It does not always help matters; it frequently makes them more difficult,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: reserve of which was small, he was obliged to ask from it a
fictitious light, an expensive brilliancy which the sun then refused.
"Devil take the radiant orb!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, "which
forces us to expend gas, instead of giving us his rays gratuitously."
"Do not let us accuse the sun," said Nicholl, "it is not his
fault, but that of the moon, which has come and placed herself
like a screen between us and it."
"It is the sun!" continued Michel.
"It is the moon!" retorted Nicholl.
An idle dispute, which Barbicane put an end to by saying:
"My friends, it is neither the fault of the sun nor of the moon;
From the Earth to the Moon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: closed, enjoying every minute of it. If Arabella hadn't made a
diversion just then I think I'd have fainted.
She'd pulled the newspaper and the tights off the table and was
running around the room with them, one leg in her mouth.
"Stop it, Arabella!" said Miss Julia, and took the tights from
her. "Yours?" she asked, with her eyebrows raised.
"No--yes," I answered.
"I'd never have suspected you of them!" she remarked. "Hardly
sheer enough to pull through a finger ring, are they?" She held
them up and gazed at them meditatively. "That's one thing I draw
the line at. On the boards, you know--never have worn 'em and
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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 Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: Nightingale Island, Gough's Island, Bouvet's Island, the Crossets,
and even to a little speck of an island south of the Cape of Good
Hope. But everywhere the People of the Sea told him the same
things. Seals had come to those islands once upon a time, but men
had killed them all off. Even when he swam thousands of miles out
of the Pacific and got to a place called Cape Corrientes (that was
when he was coming back from Gough's Island), he found a few
hundred mangy seals on a rock and they told him that men came
there too.
That nearly broke his heart, and he headed round the Horn back
to his own beaches; and on his way north he hauled out on an
The Jungle Book |
