| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: worst. Deering was yet drunk, but Girty had recovered somewhat from the
effects of the rum he had absorbed. The former rolled his big eyes and nodded
his shaggy head. He was passing judgment, from his point of view, on the fine
points of the girl.
"She cer'aintly is," he declared with a grin. "She's a little beauty. Beats
any I ever seen!"
Jim Girty stroked his sharp chin with dirty fingers. His yellow eyes, his
burnt saffron skin, his hooked nose, his thin lips--all his evil face seemed
to shine with an evil triumph. to look at him was painful. To have him gaze at
her was enough to drive any woman mad.
Dark stains spotted the bright frills of his gaudy dress, his buckskin coat
The Spirit of the Border |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: But I run ahead of my story. When we fell to playing,
after breakfast, on the second day away from the caves,
Lop-Ear led me a chase through the trees and down to
the river. We came out upon it where a large slough
entered from the blueberry swamp. The mouth of this
slough was wide, while the slough itself was
practically without a current. In the dead water, just
inside its mouth, lay a tangled mass of tree trunks.
Some of these, what of the wear and tear of freshets
and of being stranded long summers on sand-bars, were
seasoned and dry and without branches. They floated
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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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: attacks, and thus in defending the "eternal rights of man"--as every
so-called people's party has more or less done for the last hundred and
fifty years. At a closer inspection, however, of the situation and of
the parties, this superficial appearance, which veils the Class
Struggle, together with the peculiar physiognomy of this period,
vanishes wholly.
Legitimists and Orleanists constituted, as said before, the two large
factions of the party of Order. What held these two factions to their
respective Pretenders, and inversely kept them apart from each other,
what else was it but the lily and the tricolor, the House of Bourbon and
the house of Orleans, different shades of royalty? Under the Bourbons,
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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 Little Britain by Washington Irving: the girls good husbands. They are apt to be rendered
uncomfortable by comets and eclipses; and if a dog howls
dolefully at night, it is looked upon as a sure sign of a death
in
the place. There are even many ghost stories current,
particularly concerning the old mansion-houses; in several of
which it is said strange sights are sometimes seen. Lords and
ladies, the former in full bottomed wigs, hanging sleeves, and
swords, the latter in lappets, stays, hoops and brocade, have
been seen walking up and down the great waste chambers, on
moonlight nights; and are supposed to be the shades of the
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