| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: not slay me."
"And of Nada, what of Nada, my sister?" he said.
"Macropha, your mother, and Nada, your sister, are dead, Umslopogaas.
They are dead at the hands of the people of the Halakazi, who dwell in
Swaziland."
"I have heard of that people," he answered presently, "and so has
Galazi the Wolf, yonder. He has a hate to satisfy against them--they
murdered his father; now I have two, for they have murdered my mother
and my sister. Ah, Nada, my sister! Nada, my sister!" and the great
man covered his face with his hands, and rocked himself to and fro in
his grief.
Nada the Lily |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: bewildering chance, a cypher concealing a secret which she could
not intelligently read. Why should she keep the memory of that
power which was, perhaps, some unconscious quality of his nature
(no, it was not so! something deeper than reason cried:), or long
since forgotten, if felt, by him?
The man whom she most esteemed came back to her. She knew the
ripeness and harmony of his intellect, the nobility of his
character, and the generosity of a feeling which would be satisfied
with only a partial return. She felt sure, also, that she should
never possess a sentiment nearer to love than that which pleaded
his cause in her heart. But her hand lay quiet in his, her pulses
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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 Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: "No, madame. If there had been no rupture, he would be as blithe as a
lark at this moment, and might outlive you and M. le President and me.
. . . The ways of Providence are mysterious, let us not seek to fathom
them," he added to palliate to some extent the hideous idea. "It
cannot be helped. We men of business look at the practical aspects of
things. Now you see clearly, madame, that M. de Marville in his public
position would do nothing, and could do nothing, as things are. He has
broken off all relations with his cousin. You see nothing now of Pons;
you have forbidden him the house; you had excellent reasons, no doubt,
for doing as you did, but the old man is ill, and he is leaving his
property to the only friend left to him. A President of the Court of
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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 From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: the distance which separates the moon from the earth is calculated.
They took advantage of this fact to explain to them that this
distance was obtained by measuring the parallax of the moon.
The term parallax proving "caviare to the general," they further
explained that it meant the angle formed by the inclination of two
straight lines drawn from either extremity of the earth's radius
to the moon. On doubts being expressed as to the correctness of
this method, they immediately proved that not only was the mean
distance 234,347 miles, but that astronomers could not possibly
be in error in their estimate by more than seventy miles either way.
To those who were not familiar with the motions of the moon,
From the Earth to the Moon |
