| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: run to the City Hall and Frank's about the cares of marriage,
and I hurry to John Smith's upon the account of stores, and
thence, on a visit of certification, to the Norah Creina.
Methought she looked smaller than ever, sundry great ships
overspiring her from close without. She was already a
nightmare of disorder; and the wharf alongside was piled with
a world of casks, and cases, and tins, and tools, and coils of
rope, and miniature barrels of giant powder, such as it seemed
no human ingenuity could stuff on board of her. Johnson was
in the waist, in a red shirt and dungaree trousers, his eye
kindled with activity. With him I exchanged a word or two;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey: presently the road began once more to slope up. The horses
slowed to a walk. There was a mile of rolling ridge, and then
came the foothills. The road ascended through winding valleys.
Trees and brush and rocks began to appear in the dry ravines.
There was no water, yet all along the sandy washes were
indications of floods at some periods. The heat and the dust
stifled Madeline, and she had already become tired. Still she
looked with all her eyes and saw birds, and beautiful quail with
crests, and rabbits, and once she saw a deer.
"Miss Majesty," said Stillwell, "in the early days the Indians
made this country a bad one to live in. I reckon you never heerd
The Light of Western Stars |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Uplifts his song, nor cease their cooings hoarse
The wood-pigeons that are your heart's delight,
Nor doves their moaning in the elm-tree top.
TITYRUS
Sooner shall light stags, therefore, feed in air,
The seas their fish leave naked on the strand,
Germans and Parthians shift their natural bounds,
And these the Arar, those the Tigris drink,
Than from my heart his face and memory fade.
MELIBOEUS
But we far hence, to burning Libya some,
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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 Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: complexion, as white as a woman's; he had small hands, a shapely foot,
a pleasant mouth, and an aquiline nose delicately formed, of which the
tip used to become naturally pinched and white whenever he was angry,
as happened often. His irascibility was so far beyond belief that I
will tell you nothing about it; you will have the opportunity of
judging of it. No one could be calm in his presence. I alone, perhaps,
was not afraid of him; he had indeed taken such a singular fancy to me
that he thought everything I did right. When he was in a rage his brow
was knit and the muscles of the middle of his forehead set in a delta,
or, to be more explicit, in Redgauntlet's horseshoe. This mark was,
perhaps, even more terrifying than the magnetic flashes of his blue
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