| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: with the incessant clamour of the band. And back of all this,
pointing upward in mute protest, rose a solemn church spire,
white and majestic against a vast panorama of blue, moonlit
hills, that encircled the whole lurid picture. Jim's eyes turned
absently toward the church as he sat fumbling with the lock of
the little brown satchel.
He had gone from store to store in the various towns where they
had played looking for something to inspire wonder in the heart
of a miss, newly arrived at her sixteenth year. Only the
desperation of a last moment had forced him to decide upon the
imitation alligator bag, which he now held in his hand.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: event of anything happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the
housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The
Odd Girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and
made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the
scullery window, and rearing an oak.
We went, before dark, through all the natural--as opposed to
supernatural--miseries incidental to our state. Dispiriting
reports ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and
descended from the upper rooms. There was no rolling-pin, there
was no salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don't know
what it is), there was nothing in the house; what there was, was
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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 Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: At last, and not long before the blow fell on my unhappy
family, I chanced to see the doctor's house in a new light.
My father was ill; my mother confined to his bedside; and I
was suffered to go, under the charge of our driver, to the
lonely house some twenty miles away, where our packages were
left for us. The horse cast a shoe; night overtook us
halfway home; and it was well on for three in the morning
when the driver and I, alone in a light waggon, came to that
part of the road which ran below the doctor's house. The
moon swam clear; the cliffs and mountains in this strong
light lay utterly deserted; but the house, from its station
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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 Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: ground all about me.
"With drawn swords they made for me, but before I went down
beneath them they had tasted of the steel of my father's
sword, and I had given such an account of myself as I know
would have pleased my sire had he lived to witness it."
"Your father is dead?" I asked.
"He died before the shell broke to let me step out into a
world that has been very good to me. But for the sorrow
that I had never the honour to know my father, I have been
very happy. My only sorrow now is that my mother must
mourn me as she has for ten long years mourned my father."
The Gods of Mars |
