| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: plans, foolhardy though he knew them. Then he drew the girl
close to him. "Stay here," he whispered. "I am going out to
fight those beasts; but I shall be killed. Do not let them
see you. Do not let them take you alive. They are more cruel,
more cowardly, more bestial than the Wieroos."
The girl pressed close to him, her face very white. "Go, if that
is right," she whispered; "but if you die, I shall die, for I
cannot live without you." He looked sharply into her eyes.
"Oh!" he ejaculated. "What an idiot I have been! Nor could I
live without you, little girl." And he drew her very close and
kissed her lips. "Good-bye." He disengaged himself from her
Out of Time's Abyss |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: altered only, as it were, by this fact of life. A little older, a
little quieter, a little finer and a good deal fairer, she was
simply transfigured by having recovered. Sustained by the
reflection that even her recovery wouldn't enable her to
distinguish me in the crowd, I was free to look at her well. Then
it was it came home to me that my vision of her in her great
goggles had been cruelly final. As her beauty was all there was of
her, that machinery had extinguished her, and so far as I had
thought of her in the interval I had thought of her as buried in
the tomb her stern specialist had built. With the sense that she
had escaped from it came a lively wish to return to her; and if I
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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 On Horsemanship by Xenophon: distends his nostrils."
A comparatively large crest and small ears give a more typical and
horse-like appearance to the head, whilst lofty withers again allow
the rider a surer seat and a stronger adhesion between the shoulders
and the body.[22]
[22] Or if with L. D. [{kai to somati}], transl. "adhesion to the
horse's shoulders."
A "double spine,"[23] again, is at once softer to sit on than a
single, and more pleasing to the eye. So, too, a fairly deep side
somewhat rounded towards the belly[24] will render the animal at once
easier to sit and stronger, and as a general rule better able to
On Horsemanship |
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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: other's society, and their intercourse had long been limited to
the exchange of a few perfunctory letters, written with
indifference by the daughter, and with difficulty by Mrs.
Manstey, whose right hand was growing stiff with gout. Even had
she felt a stronger desire for her daughter's companionship, Mrs.
Manstey's increasing infirmity, which caused her to dread the
three flights of stairs between her room and the street, would
have given her pause on the eve of undertaking so long a journey;
and without perhaps, formulating these reasons she had long since
accepted as a matter of course her solitary life in New York.
She was, indeed, not quite lonely, for a few friends still toiled
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