| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: the gin house at Tara, but little good it did him. In Liverpool it
would bring one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but there was
no hope of getting it to Liverpool. Gerald had changed from a
wealthy man to a man who was wondering how he would feed his family
and his negroes through the winter.
Throughout the South, most of the cotton planters were in the same
fix. With the blockade closing tighter and tighter, there was no
way to get the South's money crop to its market in England, no way
to bring in the necessaries which cotton money had brought in years
gone by. And the agricultural South, waging war with the
industrial North, was needing so many things now, things it had
Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: inverted pyramid, not of speculation, but of dogmatic assertion, patched
together from all accessible rags and bones of the dead world. Some
here will, perhaps, guess from my rough descriptions, that I speak of
Iamblichus and Proclus.
Whether or not Iamblichus wrote the famous work usually attributed to
him, which describes itself as the letter of Abamnon the Teacher to
Porphyry, he became the head of that school of Neoplatonists who fell
back on theurgy and magic, and utterly swallowed up the more rational,
though more hopeless, school of Porphyry. Not that Porphyry, too, with
all his dislike of magic and the vulgar superstitions--a dislike
intimately connected with his loudly expressed dislike of the common
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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 The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: where they established themselves at a hotel. How welcome to Carley's
strained eyes were the green of mountains, the soft gleam of amber water!
How sweet and refreshing a breath of cool pure air! The change from New
York's glare and heat and dirt, and iron-red insulating walls, and
thronging millions of people, and ceaseless roar and rush, was tremendously
relieving to Carley. She had burned the candle at both ends. But the beauty
of the hills and vales, the quiet of the forest, the sight of the stars,
made it harder to forget. She had to rest. And when she rested she could
not always converse, or read, or write.
For the most part her days held variety and pleasure. The place was
beautiful, the weather pleasant, the people congenial. She motored over the
The Call of the Canyon |
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 In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: likeness to her father. Tamaiti the infidel sat with hanging head
and every mark of dejection. Terutak' streamed with sweat, his eye
was glazed, his face wore a painful rictus, his chest heaved like
that of one spent with running. The man must have been by nature
covetous; and I doubt if ever I saw moral agony more tragically
displayed. His wife by his side passionately encouraged his
resistance.
And now came the charge of the old guard. The captain, making a
skip, named the surprising figure of five pounds. At the word the
maniap's were emptied. The king's sister flung down her cards and
came to the front to listen, a cloud on her brow. The pretty girl
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