| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: the constitutive assembly, simply the struggle between republicans and
royalists; the movement itself was summed up by them in the catch-word
Reaction--night, in which all cats are grey, and allows them to drawl
out their drowsy commonplaces. Indeed, at first sight, the party of
Order presents the appearance of a tangle of royalist factions, that,
not only intrigue against each other, each aiming to raise its own
Pretender to the throne, and exclude the Pretender of the Opposite
party, but also are all united in a common hatred for and common attacks
against the "Republic." On its side, the Mountain appears, in
counter-distinction to the royalist conspiracy, as the representative of
the "Republic." The party of Order seems constantly engaged in a
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: last earthly sleep!
The "raising" brought out all the settlement--the women to look on and gossip,
while the children played; the men to bend their backs in the moving of the
heavy timbers. They celebrated the erection of a new cabin as a noteworthy
event. As a social function it had a prominent place in the settlers' short
list of pleasures.
Joe watched the proceeding with the same pleasure and surprise he had felt in
everything pertaining to border life.
To him this log-raising appeared the hardest kind of labor. Yet it was plain
these hardy men, these low-voiced women, and merry children regarded the work
as something far more significant than the mere building of a cabin. After a
The Spirit of the Border |
