| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay: other men. Can you hold me up with one arm, as you did that child?"
Maskull complied.
"That is being a man!" exclaimed the boy. "Enough!" said Polecrab
impatiently. "I called you lads here to say goodbye to your mother.
She is going away with this man. I think she may not return, but we
don't know."
The second boy's face became suddenly inflamed. "Is she going of her
own choice?" he inquired.
"Yes," replied the father.
"Then she is bad." He brought the words out with such force and
emphasis that they sounded like the crack of a whip.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: out escort.
Instantly the call "to arms" and "mount" sounded
through the camp; and in five minutes a hundred mer-
cenaries galloped rapidly toward the castle of Richard
de Tany, in the visions of their captain a great reward
and honor and preferment for the capture of the mighty
outlaw who was now almost within his clutches.
Three roads meet at Tany; one from the south along
which the King's soldiers were now riding; one from
the west which had guided Norman of Torn from his
camp to the castle; and a third which ran northwest
The Outlaw of Torn |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: accustomed poverty, who was no handsomer than a hundred others to be
seen any evening at the play, at the opera, in the world of fashion,
and who was certainly not so young as Madame de Manerville, from whom
he had obtained an assignation for that very day, and who was perhaps
waiting for him at that very hour.
But in the glance at once tender and wild, swift and deep, which that
woman's black eyes had shot at him by stealth, there was such a world
of buried sorrows and promised joys! And she had colored so fiercely
when, on coming out of a shop where she had lingered a quarter of an
hour, her look frankly met the Count's, who had been waiting for her
hard by! In fact, there were so many /buts/ and /ifs/, that, possessed
Gambara |
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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: laugh and weep; I could reason and remember; I could love and
hate. I was human, and she, dear lady, knew and felt me to be
so. How could she, then, treat me as a brute, without a mighty
struggle with all the noble powers of her own soul. That
struggle came, and the will and power of the husband was
victorious. Her noble soul was overthrown; but, he that
overthrew it did not, himself, escape the consequences. He, not
less than the other parties, was injured in his domestic peace by
the fall.
When I went into their family, it was the abode of happiness and
contentment. The mistress of the house was a model of
My Bondage and My Freedom |
