| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: had attacked Bradley and his party in our absence, and the rest
of whom we had met and scattered a few minutes later.
We felt that we had taught these wild ape-men a lesson and that
because of it we would be safer in the future--at least safer
from them; but we decided not to abate our carefulness one whit;
feeling that this new world was filled with terrors still unknown
to us; nor were we wrong.
The following morning we commenced work upon our camp, Bradley,
Olson, von Schoenvorts, Miss La Rue, and I having sat up half the
night discussing the matter and drawing plans. We set the men at
work felling trees, selecting for the purpose jarrah, a hard,
The Land that Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: The great event was their purchase of a summer cottage,
down on Lake Minniemashie.
Perhaps the most amiable feature of life in Gopher Prairie
was the summer cottages. They were merely two-room
shanties, with a seepage of broken-down chairs, peeling veneered
tables, chromos pasted on wooden walls, and inefficient kerosene
stoves. They were so thin-walled and so close together that
you could--and did--hear a baby being spanked in the fifth
cottage off. But they were set among elms and lindens on a
bluff which looked across the lake to fields of ripened wheat
sloping up to green woods.
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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 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: criticism. It's worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich,
unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping,
acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a
paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of
tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern
living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents
the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy. A year
later there is a new political ring or a change in the paper's
ownership, consequence: more confusion, more contradiction, a
sudden inrush of new ideas, their tempering, their distillation,
the reaction against them"
This Side of Paradise |
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 Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: And they reach'd the vineyard, and through its dark shadows proceeded.
So he guided her down the numerous tiers of the flat stones
Which, in an unhewn state, served as steps to the walk through the foliage.
Slowly she descended, and placed her hands on his shoulders;
And, with a quivering light, the moon through the foliage o'erlook'd them,
Till by storm-clouds envelop'd, she left the couple in darkness.
Then the strong youth supported the maiden, who on him was leaning;
She, however, not knowing the path, or observing the rough steps,
Slipp'd as she walk'd, her foot gave way, and she well nigh was falling.
Hastily held out his arm the youth with nimbleness thoughtful,
And held up his beloved one; she gently sank on his shoulders,
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