| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: of asbestos.
Greatly encouraged at finding himself not yet turned into a
cinder, the young man awaited the attack of the bulls. Just as
the brazen brutes fancied themselves sure of tossing him into
the air, he caught one of them by the horn, and the other by
his screwed-up tail, and held them in a gripe like that of an
iron vice, one with his right hand, the other with his left.
Well, he must have been wonderfully strong in his arms, to be
sure. But the secret of the matter was, that the brazen bulls
were enchanted creatures, and that Jason had broken the spell
of their fiery fierceness by his bold way of handling them.
 Tanglewood Tales |
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 From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: and hurrahs of the crowd. The cries became at last so
uproarious, and the popular enthusiasm assumed so personal a
form, that Michel Ardan, after having shaken hands some
thousands of times, at the imminent risk of leaving his fingers
behind him, was fain at last to make a bolt for his cabin.
Barbicane followed him without uttering a word.
"You are Barbicane, I suppose?" said Michel Ardan, in a tone
of voice in which he would have addressed a friend of twenty
years' standing.
"Yes," replied the president of the Gun Club.
"All right! how d'ye do, Barbicane? how are you getting on--
 From the Earth to the Moon |