| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: commenced to talk.
"Yer brother's goin' to preach out here, ain't he? Preachin' is all right,
I'll allow; but I'm kinder doubtful about preachin' to redskins. Howsumever,
I've knowed Injuns who are good fellows, and there's no tellin'. What are ye
goin' in fer--farmin'?"
"No, I wouldn't make a good farmer."
"Jest cum out kinder wild like, eh?" rejoined Jeff, knowingly.
"I wanted to come West because I was tired of tame life. I love the forest; I
want to fish and hunt; and I think I'd like to--to see Indians."
"I kinder thought so," said the old frontiersman, nodding his head as though
he perfectly understood Joe's case. "Well, lad, where you're goin' seein'
The Spirit of the Border |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: "I am afraid so," said the lady innocently.
"How if it is a spy? . . . a plot? . . . Don't go. And take the box
away from her----"
The words whispered in the pastry-cook's ear cooled his hot fit of
courage down to zero.
"Oh! I will just go out and say a word or two. I will rid you of him
soon enough," he exclaimed, as he bounced out of the shop.
The old lady meanwhile, passive as a child and almost dazed, sat down
on her chair again. But the honest pastry-cook came back directly. A
countenance red enough to begin with, and further flushed by the bake-
house fire, was suddenly blanched; such terror perturbed him that he
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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 Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: very beautiful--and we scaled the Alps of sentiment, culling their
sweetest flowers, and pulling off the daisy-petals; there is always a
moment when one pulls daisies to pieces, even if it is in a drawing-
room and there are no daisies. At the intensest moment of tenderness,
and when we are most in love, love is so well aware of its own short
duration that we are irresistibly urged to ask, 'Do you love me? Will
you love me always?' I seized the elegiac moment, so warm, so flowery,
so full-blown, to lead her to tell her most delightful lies, in the
enchanting language of love. Charlotte displayed her choicest
allurements: She could not live without me; I was to her the only man
in the world; she feared to weary me, because my presence bereft her
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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 Euthydemus by Plato: philosophy, and not mind about its professors.
...
There is a stage in the history of philosophy in which the old is dying
out, and the new has not yet come into full life. Great philosophies like
the Eleatic or Heraclitean, which have enlarged the boundaries of the human
mind, begin to pass away in words. They subsist only as forms which have
rooted themselves in language--as troublesome elements of thought which
cannot be either used or explained away. The same absoluteness which was
once attributed to abstractions is now attached to the words which are the
signs of them. The philosophy which in the first and second generation was
a great and inspiring effort of reflection, in the third becomes
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