| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: paper bag off his head, and they
told the doleful tale.
Benjamin and Flopsy were in
despair, they could not undo the
string.
But Mrs. Tittlemouse was a
resourceful person. She nibbled a
hole in the bottom corner of the
sack.
The little rabbits were pulled
out and pinched to wake them.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: The strangers shouted several times more, then rode by--
there seemed to be a dozen of the horses--and I heard nothing more.
I struggled, but could not free myself from my bonds.
I tried to speak, but the gag was effective; I could not make a sound.
I listened for my wife's voice and my child's--listened long and intently,
but no sound came from the other end of the room where their bed was.
This silence became more and more awful, more and more ominous,
every moment. Could you have endured an hour of it, do you think?
Pity me, then, who had to endure three. Three hours--? it was three ages!
Whenever the clock struck, it seemed as if years had gone by since I
had heard it last. All this time I was struggling in my bonds;
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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 The Message by Honore de Balzac: essential points of passion. We had laid it down as an axiom at
the very outset, that in theory and practice there was no such
piece of driveling nonsense in this world as a certificate of
birth; that plenty of women were younger at forty than many a
girl of twenty; and, to come to the point, that a woman is no
older than she looks.
This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck out,
in all good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when we had
portrayed our mistresses as young, charming, and devoted to us,
women of rank, women of taste, intellectual and clever; when we
had endowed them with little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately
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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 A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: fully a thousand feet into the air. But few buildings in
Zodanga were higher than these barracks, though several topped
it by a few hundred feet; the docks of the great battleships
of the line standing some fifteen hundred feet from the
ground, while the freight and passenger stations of the
merchant squadrons rose nearly as high.
It was a long climb up the face of the building, and one
fraught with much danger, but there was no other way, and
so I essayed the task. The fact that Barsoomian architecture
is extremely ornate made the feat much simpler than I had
anticipated, since I found ornamental ledges and projections
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