| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: I stood up on a thwart and waved my soggy coat above my head.
Nobs stood upon another and barked. The girl sat at my feet
straining her eyes toward the deck of the oncoming boat.
"They see us," she said at last. "There is a man answering
your signal." She was right. A lump came into my throat--for
her sake rather than for mine. She was saved, and none too soon.
She could not have lived through another night upon the Channel;
she might not have lived through the coming day.
The tug came close beside us, and a man on deck threw us a rope.
Willing hands dragged us to the deck, Nobs scrambling nimbly
aboard without assistance. The rough men were gentle as mothers
The Land that Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: Indian's lodge, where a warrior might point with grim pride and say: "No more
does the Deathwind blow over the hills and vales." We could tell of how his
keen eye once again saw Wingenund over the sights of his fatal rifle, and how
he was once again a prisoner in the camp of that lifelong foe, but that's
another story, which, perhaps, we may tell some day.
To-day the beautiful city of Wheeling rises on the banks of the Ohio, where
the yells of the Indians once blanched the cheeks of the pioneers. The broad,
winding river rolls on as of yore; it alone remains unchanged. What were
Indians and pioneers, forts and cities to it? Eons of time before human beings
lived it flowed slowly toward the sea, and ages after men and their works are
dust, it will roll on placidly with its eternal scheme of nature.
Betty Zane |
