| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: rupees a month and had money of his own, he was well off. He
belonged to good people, and suffered in the cold weather from lung
complaints. In the hot weather he dangled on the brink of heat-
apoplexy; but it never quite killed him.
Understand, I do not blame Schriederling. He was a good husband
according to his lights, and his temper only failed him when he was
being nursed. Which was some seventeen days in each month. He was
almost generous to his wife about money matters, and that, for him,
was a concession. Still Mrs. Schreiderling was not happy. They
married her when she was this side of twenty and had given all her
poor little heart to another man. I have forgotten his name, but
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: with the Chevalier. The two elderly men considered that the pride of a
d'Esgrignon was a sufficient safeguard against anything unbefitting;
as for a dishonorable action, no one in the house imagined that a
d'Esgrignon could be guilty of it. HONOR, the great principle of
Monarchy, was planted firm like a beacon in the hearts of the family;
it lighted up the least action, it kindled the least thought of a
d'Esgrignon. "A d'Esgrignon ought not to permit himself to do such and
such a thing; he bears a name which pledges him to make a future
worthy of the past"--a noble teaching which should have been
sufficient in itself to keep alive the tradition of noblesse--had
been, as it were, the burden of Victurnien's cradle song. He heard
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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 Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced; an old
rusty sword ta'en out of the town armoury, with a broken hilt,
and chapeless; with two broken points: his horse hipped with an
old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred; besides, possessed
with the glanders and like to mose in the chine; troubled with
the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped
with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives,
stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in
the back and shoulder-shotten; near-legged before, and with a
half-checked bit, and a head-stall of sheep's leather, which,
being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often
The Taming of the Shrew |
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 Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: disappeared, as Carthoris had known that it would; but where
it entered the plain its direction had been toward Aaanthor
and so toward Aaanthor the two turned their faces.
It was a long and tedious journey, fraught with many dangers.
The bowman could not travel at the pace set by Carthoris,
whose muscles carried him with great rapidity over the
face of the small planet, the force of gravity of which
exerts so much less retarding power than that of the Earth.
Fifty miles a day is a fair average for a Barsoomian,
but the son of John Carter might easily have covered
a hundred or more miles had he cared to desert his
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
