| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: amidst the clashing of swords, the ringing of bucklers, the clattering
of helmets, the twanging of bow-strings, the whizzing of arrows,
the screams of women, the shouts of the warriors, and the vociferations
of the peasantry, who had been assembled to the intended nuptials,
and who, seeing a fair set-to, contrived to pick a quarrel among
themselves on the occasion, and proceeded, with staff and cudgel,
to crack each other's skulls for the good of the king and the earl.
One tall friar alone was untouched by the panic of his brethren,
and stood steadfastly watching the combat with his arms a-kembo,
the colossal emblem of an unarmed neutrality.
At length, through the midst of the internal confusion, the earl,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: Texas, an' we growed up in Texas ways same as if we'd been born
there. We had been poor, an' there we prospered. In time the
little village where we went became a town, an' strangers an' new
families kept movin' in. Milly was the belle them days. I can see
her now, a little girl no bigger 'n a bird, an' as pretty. She
had the finest eyes, dark blue-black when she was excited, an'
beautiful all the time. You remember Milly's eyes! An' she had
light-brown hair with streaks of gold, an' a mouth that every
feller wanted to kiss.
"An' about the time Milly was the prettiest an' the sweetest,
along came a young minister who began to ride some of a race with
Riders of the Purple Sage |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: he had the temerity to stroke her golden curls with a great hand.
Fay rewarded his boldness with a smile, and when he had gone to
the extreme of closing that great hand over her little brown one,
she said, simply, "I like oo!"
Sight of his face then made Jane oblivious for the time to his
character as a hater of Mormons. Out of the mother longing that
swelled her breast she divined the child hunger in Lassiter.
He returned the next day, and the next; and upon the following he
came both at morning and at night. Upon the evening of this
fourth day Jane seemed to feel the breaking of a brooding
struggle in Lassiter. During all these visits he had scarcely a
Riders of the Purple Sage |
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 Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: His wife had been dead a year when I met Drayton Deane in the
smoking-room of a small club of which we both were members, but
where for months - perhaps because I rarely entered it - I hadn't
seen him. The room was empty and the occasion propitious. I
deliberately offered him, to have done with the matter for ever,
that advantage for which I felt he had long been looking.
"As an older acquaintance of your late wife's than even you were,"
I began, "you must let me say to you something I have on my mind.
I shall be glad to make any terms with you that you see fit to name
for the information she must have had from George Corvick - the
information you know, that had come to him, poor chap, in one of
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