| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: It was this thought more than another that caused him
to pause in the pursuit of his revenge, since he knew
that the act he contemplated would brand him the
very thing he was, yet wished not to be.
At length, however, he slowly comprehended that no act
of his would change the hideous fact of his origin;
that nothing would make him acceptable in her eyes,
and with a shake of his head he arose and stepped toward
the living room to continue his search for the professor.
In the workshop Bududreen and his men had easily
located the chest. Dragging it into the north campong
The Monster Men |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: yards a yoke of great-necked stolid oxen were patiently haling at
the plough. I saw one of these mild formidable servants of the
glebe, who took a sudden interest in Modestine and me. The furrow
down which he was journeying lay at an angle to the road, and his
head was solidly fixed to the yoke like those of caryatides below a
ponderous cornice; but he screwed round his big honest eyes and
followed us with a ruminating look, until his master bade him turn
the plough and proceed to reascend the field. From all these
furrowing ploughshares, from the feet of oxen, from a labourer here
and there who was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, the wind
carried away a thin dust like so much smoke. It was a fine, busy,
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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 Adam Bede by George Eliot: from his lantern fell on the opposite corner of the cell, where
Hetty was sitting on her straw pallet with her face buried in her
knees. It seemed as if she were asleep, and yet the grating of
the lock would have been likely to waken her.
The door closed again, and the only light in the cell was that of
the evening sky, through the small high grating--enough to discern
human faces by. Dinah stood still for a minute, hesitating to
speak because Hetty might be asleep, and looking at the motionless
heap with a yearning heart. Then she said, softly, "Hetty!"
There was a slight movement perceptible in Hetty's frame--a start
such as might have been produced by a feeble electrical shock--but
Adam Bede |
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 Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: "Keep all the gifts that my sisters have bestowed on you; but you
shall never know what you wish for!"
If, in its heroic duel with Russia, Poland had won the day, the Poles
would now be fighting among themselves, as they formerly fought in
their Diets to hinder each other from being chosen King. When that
nation, composed entirely of hot-headed dare-devils, has good sense
enough to seek a Louis XI. among her own offspring, to accept his
despotism and a dynasty, she will be saved.
What Poland has been politically, almost every Pole is in private
life, especially under the stress of disaster. Thus Wenceslas
Steinbock, after worshiping his wife for three years and knowing that
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