| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: war party from the north came along and massacred 'em to a man,
with all the old folks and women looking on from the rock. Then
the war party went on south and left the village to get down the
best way they could. Of course they never got down. They starved
to death up there, and when the war party came back on their way
north, they could hear the children crying from the edge of the
bluff where they had crawled out, but they didn't see a sign of a
grown Indian, and nobody has ever been up there since."
We exclaimed at this dolorous legend and sat up.
"There couldn't have been many people up there," Percy demurred.
"How big is the top, Tip?"
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: standing armies, a dictatorship, and a heavy taxation, might,
eventually, compromise the fate of the republican institutions.
But we ought not to confound the future prospects of the republic
with those of the Union. The Union is an accident, which will
only last as long as circumstances are favorable to its
existence; but a republican form of government seems to me to be
the natural state of the Americans; which nothing but the
continued action of hostile causes, always acting in the same
direction, could change into a monarchy. The Union exists
principally in the law which formed it; one revolution, one
change in public opinion, might destroy it forever; but the
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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 Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: the King of the Gubbings. "So now I dare call them," says Fuller,
"secured by distance, which one of more valor durst not do to their
face, for fear their fury fall upon him. Yet hitherto have I met
with none who could render a reason of their name. We call the
shavings of fish (which are little worth) gubbings; and sure it is
that they are sensible that the word importeth shame and disgrace.
"As for the suggestion of my worthy and learned friend, Mr. Joseph
Maynard, that such as did inhabitare montes gibberosos, were called
Gubbings, such will smile at the ingenuity who dissent from the
truth of the etymology.
"I have read of an England beyond Wales, but the Gubbings land is a
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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 Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: a year."
"Should you think so, madame?" said the judge, looking much
astonished.
"Yes, at least," replied the Marquise.
"And the furniture, too, must have cost a lot of money?"
"More than a hundred thousand francs," replied Madame d'Espard, who
could not help smiling at the lawyer's vulgarity.
"Judges, madame, are apt to be incredulous; it is what they are paid
for, and I am incredulous. The Baron Jeanrenaud and his mother must
have fleeced M. d'Espard most preposterously, if what you say is
correct. There is a stable establishment which, by your account, costs
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