| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: voice to be heard by him alone, began:
"Brother, I am the daughter of an exile. My name is
Nadia Fedor. My mother died at Riga scarcely a month
ago, and I am going to Irkutsk to rejoin my father and
share his exile."
"I, too, am going to Irkutsk," answered Michael," and
I shall thank Heaven if it enables me to give Nadia Fedor
safe and sound into her father's hands."
"Thank you, brother," replied Nadia.
Michael Strogoff then added that he had obtained a spe-
cial podorojna for Siberia, and that the Russian authori-
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: trench and that I do not care to be shot or bayoneted."
"And that is all?" queried Capell, after directing an officer
to give Tarzan a hand grenade; "you will empty the trench
alone?"
"Not exactly alone," replied Tarzan with a grim smile; "but
I shall empty it, and, by the way, your men may come in
through the tunnel from the listening post if you prefer. In
about half an hour, Colonel," and he turned and left them.
As he passed through the camp there flashed suddenly upon
the screen of recollection, conjured there by some reminder
of his previous visit to headquarters, doubtless, the image of
Tarzan the Untamed |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: singular case of a buried and resuscitated fakir, which I had
been often told by an uncle of mine, then lately dead,
Inspector-General John Balfour.
On such a fine frosty night, with no wind and the thermometer
below zero, the brain works with much vivacity; and the next
moment I had seen the circumstance transplanted from India
and the tropics to the Adirondack wilderness and the
stringent cold of the Canadian border. Here then, almost
before I had begun my story, I had two countries, two of the
ends of the earth involved: and thus though the notion of
the resuscitated man failed entirely on the score of general
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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 Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: meadow."
I fell asleep then, fully resolved to let nature have her way.
Ah! my sweet, how heavenly it was to waken up from all the pain and
haziness of the first days, when everything was still dim,
uncomfortable, confused. A ray of light pierced the darkness; my heart
and soul, my inner self--a self I had never known before--rent the
envelope of gloomy suffering, as a flower bursts its sheath at the
first warm kiss of the sun, at the moment when the little wretch
fastened on my breast and sucked. Not even the sensation of the
child's first cry was so exquisite as this. This is the dawn of
motherhood, this is the /Fiat lux/!
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