| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: there and be safe.
He was going to take the river road, and told us to find
out if Brace and Jubiter was to home and no strangers there,
and then slip out about sundown and tell him. Said he
would wait for us in a little bunch of sycamores right back
of Tom's uncle Silas's tobacker field on the river road,
a lonesome place.
We set and talked a long time about his chances, and Tom
said he was all right if the pals struck up the river
instead of down, but it wasn't likely, because maybe
they knowed where he was from; more likely they would
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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 Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: "It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own sake
that I am speaking. I think it right that you should know that the most
dreadful things are being said against you in London."
"I don't wish to know anything about them. I love scandals
about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me.
They have not got the charm of novelty."
"They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman is interested
in his good name. You don't want people to talk of you as
something vile and degraded. Of course, you have your position,
and your wealth, and all that kind of thing. But position
and wealth are not everything. Mind you, I don't believe these
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: returned, and almost immediately came another by my ear. I
struck at this, and caught something threadlike. It was drawn
swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I turned, and I
saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that
stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their
stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast
ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon
me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a
month between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the
same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped.
Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the
The Time Machine |
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 Adventure by Jack London: during the first year of Berande, and their contracts expire on
different months. Naturally, they have contaminated the new boys
to a certain extent; but that can soon be remedied, and then
Berande will be a respectable plantation."
Joan nodded but remained silent. She was too occupied in glimpsing
the vision of the one lone white man as she had first seen him,
helpless from fever, a collapsed wraith in a steamer-chair, who, up
to the last heart-beat, by some strange alchemy of race, was
pledged to mastery.
"It is a pity," she said. "But the white man has to rule, I
suppose."
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