| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: then his body slipped over the oar and into the river, where it sank.
"My God! Shot!" cried Jim, in horrified tones.
He saw a puff of white smoke rising above the willows. Then the branches
parted, revealing the dark forms of several Indian warriors. From the rifle in
the foremost savage's had a slight veil of smoke rose. With the leap of a
panther the redskin sprang from the strip of sand to the raft.
"Hold, Jim! Drop that ax! We're caught!" cried Joe.
"It's that Indian from the fort!" gasped Jim.
The stalwart warrior was indeed Silvertip. But how changed! Stripped of the
blanket he had worn at the settlement, now standing naked but for his buckskin
breech-cloth, with his perfectly proportioned form disclosed in all its sinewy
The Spirit of the Border |
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 Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: By strong convulsions rent apart,
Are running all to waste.
And as it mantling passes round,
With fennel is it wreathed and crowned,
Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned
Are in its waters steeped and drowned,
And give a bitter taste.
Above the lowly plants it towers,
The fennel, with its yellow flowers,
And in an earlier age than ours
Was gifted with the wondrous powers,
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