| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Look you, Dominie; look you, and listen!
Look in my face, first; search every line there;
Mark every feature, -- chin, lip, and forehead!
Look in my eyes, and tell me the lesson
You read there; measure my nose, and tell me
Where I am wanting! A man's nose, Dominie,
Is often the cast of his inward spirit;
So mark mine well. But why do you smile so?
Pity, or what? Is it written all over,
This face of mine, with a brute's confession?
Nothing but sin there? nothing but hell-scars?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: Now for the application: a despotic monarch, unless he weds some
foreign bride, is forced to choose a wife from those beneath him, so
that the height of satisfaction is denied him.[35]
[35] Al. "supreme content, the quintessential bliss, is quite unknown
to him."
The tender service of the proudest-souled of women, wifely rendered,
how superlatively charming![36] and by contrast, how little welcome is
such ministration where the wife is but a slave--when present, barely
noticed; or if lacking, what fell pains and passions will it not
engender!
[36] Or, "the gentle ministrations of loftiest-thoughted women and
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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 Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: knew that Lassiter and he were to be friends.
"Venters, let's talk awhile before we go down there," said
Lassiter, slipping his bridle. "I ain't in no hurry. Them's sure
fine dogs you've got." With a rider's eye he took in the points
of Venter's horse, but did not speak his thought. "Well, did
anythin' come off after I left you last night?"
Venters told him about the rustlers.
"I was snug hid in the sage," replied Lassiter, "an' didn't see
or hear no one. Oldrin's got a high hand here, I reckon. It's no
news up in Utah how he holes in canyons an' leaves no track."
Lassiter was silent a moment. "Me an' Oldrin' wasn't exactly
Riders of the Purple Sage |
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 Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: never take the fly until the fog has lifted; and in this the
scientific angler sees, with gratitude, a remarkable adaptation of
the laws of nature to the tastes of man. The canoes are waiting at
the front door. We step into them and push off, Favonius going up
the stream a couple of miles to the mouth of the Patapedia, and I
down, a little shorter distance, to the famous Indian House Pool.
The slim boat glides easily on the current, with a smooth buoyant
motion, quickened by the strokes of the paddles in the bow and the
stern. We pass around two curves in the river and find ourselves
at the head of the pool. Here the man in the stern drops the
anchor, just on the edge of the bar where the rapid breaks over
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