| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: he made little Harry Bennet, who had started out with his gun, stay at home
and went after Mr. Gobbler himself."
"Is that all? Well, that is nothing to get alarmed about, is it? I actually
had a feeling of fear, or a presentiment, we might say."
They beached the canoe and spread out the lunch in the shade near the spring.
Alfred threw himself at length upon the grass and Betty sat leaning against
the tree. She took a biscuit in one hand, a pickle in the other, and began to
chat volubly to Alfred of her school life, and of Philadelphia, and the
friends she had made there. At length, remarking his abstraction, she said:
"You are not listening to me."
"I beg your pardon. My thoughts did wander. I was thinking of my mother.
Betty Zane |
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 Sophist by Plato: mere creature or expression of the age in which he lives. His ideas are
inseparable from himself, and would have been nothing without him. Through
a thousand personal influences they have been brought home to the minds of
others. He starts from antecedents, but he is great in proportion as he
disengages himself from them or absorbs himself in them. Moreover the
types of greatness differ; while one man is the expression of the
influences of his age, another is in antagonism to them. One man is borne
on the surface of the water; another is carried forward by the current
which flows beneath. The character of an individual, whether he be
independent of circumstances or not, inspires others quite as much as his
words. What is the teaching of Socrates apart from his personal history,
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