| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: That was the beginning of the Bow Leg Mountains. Somewhere over
there were the red men, ranging in unfrequented depths of rock
and pine--their forbidden ground.
Dinner was ready, and they sat down.
"And I suppose," Balaam continued, still hot on the subject,
"you'd claim Indians object to killing a white man when they run
on to him good and far from human help? These peaceable Indians
are just the worst in the business."
"That's so," assented the easy-opinioned Shorty, exactly as if he
had always maintained this view. "Chap started for Sunk Creek
three weeks ago. Trapper he was; old like, with a red shirt. One
The Virginian |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Confessio Amantis by John Gower: For if Fa crere come aboute,
Thanne afterward hem stant no doute
To voide with a soubtil hond
The beste goodes of the lond
And bringe chaf and take corn.
Where as Fa crere goth toforn,
In all his weie he fynt no lette;
That Dore can non huissher schette 2130
In which him list to take entre:
And thus the conseil most secre
Of every thing Fa crere knoweth,
Confessio Amantis |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: most religious Egyptians? It was a great problem: but Ptolemy solved
it. He seems to have taken the same method which Brindley the engineer
used in his perplexities, for he went to bed. And there he had a dream:
How the foreign god Serapis, of Pontus (somewhere near this present
hapless Sinope), appeared to him, and expressed his wish to come to
Alexandria, and there try his influence on the Religious Sentiment. So
Serapis was sent for, and came--at least the idol of him, and--
accommodating personage!--he actually fitted. After he had been there
awhile, he was found to be quite an old acquaintance--to be, in fact,
the Greek Jove, and two or three other Greek gods, and also two or three
Egyptian gods beside--indeed, to be no other than the bull Apis, after
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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 Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: cottonwood.
Meanwhile Mac had fastened the handkerchief of his mistress on
the end of a switch he had picked up and was edging out of range.
His tense, narrowed gaze never left the bush-clump from which the
shots were being pumped, and he was careful during their retreat
to remain on the danger side of the road, in order to cover
Helen.
"I guess Bannister's right. He don't want us, whoever he is."
And even as he murmured it, the wind of a bullet lifted his hat
from his head. He picked it up and examined it. The course of the
bullet was marked by a hole in the wide brim, and two more in the
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