| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: bullets sang past my head so close that I knew Bill was aiming to more than
scare me. I dragged myself over the edge and was safe.
The canyon, with its dense thickets and scrubby clumps of trees, lay below
in plain sight. Once hidden there, I would be hard to find. Picking up my
rifle, I ran swiftly along the base of the slope and soon gained the cover
of the woods.
XI. THE OLD HUNTER
I ran till I got a stitch in my side, and then slowed down to a dog-trot.
The one thing to do was to get a long way ahead of my pursuers, for surely
at the outset they would stick like hounds to my trail.
A mile or more below the gorge I took to the stream and waded. It was
The Young Forester |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: The duke will lay upon him all the honour
That good convenience claims.
COUNTESS.
Return you thither?
SECOND GENTLEMAN.
Ay, madam, with the swiftest wing of speed.
HELENA.
[Reads.] 'Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France.'
'Tis bitter.
COUNTESS.
Find you that there?
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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 New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: to save you? Oh, no, I am a good friend to those that please me!
and we have a back door upon another lane. But," she added,
checking him, for he had got upon his feet immediately on this
welcome news, "but I will not show where it is unless you kiss me.
Will you, Harry?"
"That I will," he cried, remembering his gallantry, "not for your
back door, but because you are good and pretty."
And he administered two or three cordial salutes, which were
returned to him in kind.
Then Prudence led him to the back gate, and put her hand upon the
key.
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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 The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: "All are very good eating," said the Adjutant, clattering
his beak.
"So my cousin says, and makes a great to-do over hunting them,
but they do not climb the banks to escape his sharp nose.
MY people are otherwise. Their life is on the land, in the
houses, among the cattle. I must know what they do, and what
they are about to do; and adding the tail to the trunk, as the
saying is, I make up the whole elephant. Is there a green branch
and an iron ring hanging over a doorway? The old Mugger knows
that a boy has been born in that house, and must some day come
down to the Ghaut to play. Is a maiden to be married?
The Second Jungle Book |
