| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Just then an officer emerged from the tiny cabin. He
reprimanded the warrior for conversing with the prisoner,
nor would he himself reply to any of her inquiries.
No harm was offered her during the journey, and so
they came at last to their destination with the girl no
wiser as to her abductors or their purpose than at first.
Here the flier settled slowly into the plaza of one of
those mute monuments of Mars' dead and forgotten past--
the deserted cities that fringe the sad ochre sea-bottoms
where once rolled the mighty floods upon whose bosoms moved
the maritime commerce of the peoples that are gone for ever.
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: quadrupeds--which, in some instances, is known to have affected
the squirrel tribe, impelling them to a general and mysterious
movement, in which they were seen, say some, crossing the
broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail
raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with their
dead--that something like the furor which affects the domestic
cattle in the spring, and which is referred to a worm in their
tails,--affects both nations and individuals, either perennially
or from time to time. Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our
town, but it to some extent unsettles the value of real estate
here, and, if I were a broker, I should probably take that
Walking |
