| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: their horses made in eating their provender, and the murmur of the
waters of the Rhine, together with those indefinable sounds which
always enliven an inn when filled with persons preparing to go to bed.
Doors and windows are opened and shut, voices murmur vague words, and
a few interpellations echo along the passages.
At this moment of silence and tumult the two Frenchmen and their
landlord, who was boasting of Andernach, his inn, his cookery, the
Rhine wines, the Republican army, and his wife, were all three
listening with a sort of interest to the hoarse cries of sailors in a
boat which appeared to be coming to the wharf. The innkeeper, familiar
no doubt with the guttural shouts of the boatmen, went out hastily,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: '"Why, 'tis one you gived him," I says.
'"To be sure," she says. "'Tis just a apple," and she went
ashore with her hand to her head. It always hurted her to show
her gifts.
Him and me puzzled over that talk plenty. It sticked in his
mind quite extravagant. The very next time we slipped out for
some fetchin' trade, we met Mus' Stenning's boat over by Calais
sands; and he warned us that the Spanishers had shut down all
their Dutch ports against us English, and their galliwopses was
out picking up our boats like flies off hogs' backs. Mus' Stenning
he runs for Shoreham, but Frankie held on a piece, knowin' that
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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 Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: complexion; his hat cocked on the left ear; his hab-
it, on warm evenings, of wearing his coat over one
shoulder, like a hussar's dolman; his manner of
leaping over the stiles, not as a feat of agility, but
in the ordinary course of progression--all these
peculiarities were, as one may say, so many causes
of scorn and offence to the inhabitants of the vil-
lage. They wouldn't in their dinner hour lie flat
on their backs on the grass to stare at the sky.
Neither did they go about the fields screaming dis-
mal tunes. Many times have I heard his high-
Amy Foster |
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 Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: Girty's forces had knowledge beforehand of the proximity of this band, for the
signals created no excitement. The Indians expressed only a lazy curiosity.
Soon several Delaware scouts appeared, escorting a large party of
frontiersmen.
These men turned out to be Captain Williamson's force, which had been out on
an expedition after a marauding tribe of Chippewas. This last named tribe had
recently harried the remote settlers, and committed depredations on the
outskirts of the white settlements eastward. The company was composed of men
who had served in the garrison at Fort Pitt, and hunters and backwoodsmen from
Yellow Creek and Fort Henry. The captain himself was a typical borderman,
rough and bluff, hardened by long years of border life, and, like most
The Spirit of the Border |
