| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: from their nook. He sat down to read,--there was a dead silence
through the house. Melmoth looked wistfully at the candles,
snuffed them, and still thought they looked dim, (perchance he
thought they burned blue, but such thought he kept to himself).
Certain it is, he often changed his posture, and would have changed
his chair, had there been more than one in the apartment.
He sank for a few moments into a fit of gloomy abstraction, till
the sound of the clock striking twelve made him start,--it was the
only sound he had heard for some hours, and the sounds produced by
inanimate things, while all living beings around are as dead, have
at such an hour an effect indescribably awful. John looked at his
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: PERICLES.
A terrible childben hast thou had, my dear;
No light, no fire: the unfriendly elements
Forgot thee utterly; nor have I time
To give thee hallow'd to thy grave, but straight
Must cast thee, scarcely coffin'd, in the ooze;
Where, for a monument upon thy bones,
And e'er-remaining lamps, the belching whale
And humming water must o'erwhelm thy corpse,
Lying with simple shells. O Lychorida.
Bid Nestor bring me spices, ink and paper,
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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 In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: people, and people who never are worried."
The figure of the strange man rose before her--would not be dismissed.
"That was the man for me, after all is said and done--a man without a care
--who'd give me everything I want and with whom I'd always feel that sense
of life and of being in touch with the world. I never wanted to fight--it
was thrust on me. Really, there's a fount of happiness in me, that is
drying up, little by little, in this hateful existence. I'll be dead if
this goes on--and"--she stirred in the bed and flung out her arms--"I want
passion, and love, and adventure--I yearn for them. Why should I stay here
and rot?--I am rotting!" she cried, comforting herself with the sound of
her breaking voice. "But if I tell Casimir all this when he comes this
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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: objects no greater than a blade of grass may be distinctly
recognized. I afterward, in Helium, saw many of these
pictures, as well as the instruments which produced them.
"If, then, you are so familiar with earthly things," I asked,
"why is it that you do not recognize me as identical with the
inhabitants of that planet?"
She smiled again as one might in bored indulgence of a
questioning child.
"Because, John Carter," she replied, "nearly every planet
and star having atmospheric conditions at all approaching
those of Barsoom, shows forms of animal life almost
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