| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Enchanted Island of Yew by L. Frank Baum: clapped their twin hands together and the doors of gold flew open.
A perfect silence greeted them, during which the double Ki and the
double Ki-Ki bent their four bodies low and advanced into the
throne-room, followed by Prince Marvel and Nerle.
In the center of the room stood two thrones of dainty filigree work in
solid gold, and over them were canopies of yellow velvet, the folds of
which were caught up and draped with bands of green ribbon. And on
the thrones were seated two of the sweetest and fairest little maidens
that mortal man had ever beheld. Their lovely hair was fine as a
spider's web; their eyes were kind and smiling, their cheeks soft and
dimpled, their mouths shapely as a cupid's bow and tinted like the
The Enchanted Island of Yew |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: of the floor. Above, and circling the courtyard, was a
series of open balconies. Monkeys scampered about the
deserted ruins, and gaily plumaged birds flitted in and
out among the columns and the galleries far above; but
no sign of human presence was discernible. Werper felt
relieved. He sighed, as though a great weight had been
lifted from his shoulders. He took a step toward one
of the exits, and then he halted, wide-eyed in
astonishment and terror, for almost at the same instant
a dozen doors opened in the courtyard wall and a horde
of frightful men rushed in upon him.
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: the treaty signed, our traveller was put in training, or we might say
weaned, by the secretary-general of the enterprise, who freed his mind
of its swaddling-clothes, showed him the dark holes of the business,
taught him its dialect, took the mechanism apart bit by bit, dissected
for his instruction the particular public he was expected to gull,
crammed him with phrases, fed him with impromptu replies, provisioned
him with unanswerable arguments, and, so to speak, sharpened the file
of the tongue which was about to operate upon the life of France.
The puppet amply rewarded the pains bestowed upon him. The heads of
the company boasted of the illustrious Gaudissart, showed him such
attention and proclaimed the great talents of this perambulating
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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 The American by Henry James: To speak with almost impudent frankness, you interest me!"
All this was uttered by M. de Bellegarde with the modulated smoothness
of the man of the world, and in spite of his excellent English,
of the Frenchman; but Newman, at the same time that he sat noting its
harmonious flow, perceived that it was not mere mechanical urbanity.
Decidedly, there was something in his visitor that he liked.
M. de Bellegarde was a foreigner to his finger-tips, and if Newman
had met him on a Western prairie he would have felt it proper
to address him with a "How-d'ye-do, Mosseer?" But there was
something in his physiognomy which seemed to cast a sort of aerial
bridge over the impassable gulf produced by difference of race.
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