| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: who sat sewing at an upper window, the house seemed to be
deserted. Not a sound broke the afternoon stillness of room or
garden, and yet I felt that more was happening in this silence
than appeared on the surface. I begin to grow curious--
suspicious, and presently slipped out myself by way of the
stables, and skirting the wood at the back of the house, gained
with a little trouble the bridge which crossed the stream and led
to the village.
Turning round at this point I could see the house, and I moved a
little aside into the underwood, and stood gazing at the windows,
trying to unriddle the matter. It was not likely that M. de
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: thing that happened to-night."
Bridge and the boy realized that she was not talking
to them--that for the moment she had lost sight of their
presence--she was talking to that father whose heart
would be breaking with the breaking of the new day,
trying to convince him that his little girl had done no
wrong.
Again she sat up, and when she spoke there was no
tremor in her voice.
"I may die," she said. "I want to die. I do not see how
I can go on living after last night; but if I do die I want
The Oakdale Affair |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: dependent on the character of the dance. Clarke, who had
feared censure and all kinds of trouble, is, of course,
rejoicing greatly. A characteristic feature: the argument of
the pastors was handed in in the form of a fictitious
narrative of the voyage of one Mr. Pye, an English traveller,
and his conversation with a chief; there are touches of
satire in this educational romance. Mr. Pye, for instance,
admits that he knows nothing about the Bible. At the Mission
I was sought out by Henry in a devil of an agitation; he has
been made the victim of a forgery - a crime hitherto unknown
in Samoa. I had to go to Folau, the chief judge here, in the
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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 Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: Point with its watching cannon; and by noon of a gray and
boisterous day, under a lusty wind and a slant of rain, just five
months after her departure, the "Bertha Millner" let go her anchor
in San Francisco Bay some few hundred yards off the Lifeboat
Station.
In this berth the schooner was still three or four miles from the
city and the water-front. But Moran detested any nearer approach
to civilization, and Wilbur himself was willing to avoid, at least
for one day, the publicity which he believed the "Bertha's"
reappearance was sure to attract. He remembered, too, that the
little boat carried with her a fortune of $100,000, and decided
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