| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: and my gun had flown over my head as I fell. It makes a man mighty
wide awake to be in the kind of box that I was in. I scarcely knew
where I was hurt, or whether I was hurt or not, but turned right
over on my face to crawl after my weapon. Unless you have tried to
get about with a smashed leg you don't know what pain is, and I let
out a howl like a bullock's.
This was the unluckiest noise that ever I made in my life. Up to
then Uma had stuck to her tree like a sensible woman, knowing she
would be only in the way; but as soon as she heard me sing out, she
ran forward. The Winchester cracked again, and down she went.
I had sat up, leg and all, to stop her; but when I saw her tumble I
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: appears to me but a mockery; all my projects of a holy life were
wild absurdities: in fact, any joys but those I may hope for at
your side are fit objects of contempt. There are none that would
not vanish into worthlessness before one single glance of thine!'
"In promising her, however, a full remission of her past
frailties, I enquired how she permitted herself to be led astray
by B----. She informed me that having seen her at her window, he
became passionately in love with her; that he made his advances
in the true style of a mercantile cit;--that is to say, by giving
her to understand in his letter, that his payments would be
proportioned to her favours; that she had admitted his overtures
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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 Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: says I, "though she's a slipping along all right, now," says I. He
give a kind of a groan, and says--
' "I've seed a raft act so before, along here," he says, " 'pears
to me the current has most quit above the head of this bend durin'
the last two years," he says.
'Well, he raised up two or three times, and looked away off
and around on the water. That started me at it, too. A body is
always doing what he sees somebody else doing, though there mayn't
be no sense in it. Pretty soon I see a black something floating
on the water away off to stabboard and quartering behind us.
I see he was looking at it, too. I says--
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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 Lin McLean by Owen Wister: forever a foaming glass, and forever in his left a string of sausages
that dangled down among the gnomes. With his American back to this, the
cow-puncher, wearing the same serious, absent face he had not changed
since he ran away from himself at Cheyenne, considered carefully the Hot
Scotch question, and which side of the road to take and stick to, while
the little bootblacks found him once more and cried, "Shine? Shine?"
monotonous as snow-birds. He settled to stay over here with the
south-side Scotches, and the little one-note song reaching his attention,
he suddenly shoved his foot at the nearest boy, who lightly sprang away.
"Dare you to touch him!" piped a snow-bird, dangerously. They were in
short trousers, and the eldest enemy, it may be, was ten.
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