| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: her rapid speech, her low laughter, her quick movements, her
playful moods with the rangers, the dark and passionate glance,
which rested so often on her lover, the whispers in the dusk as
hand in hand they paced the campfire beat--these helped Gale to
retain his loosening hold on reality, to resist the lure of a
strange beckoning life where a man stood free in the golden open,
where emotion was not, nor trouble, nor sickness, nor anything but
the savage's rest and sleep and action and dream.
Although the Yaqui was as his shadow, Gale reached a point when
he seemed to wander alone at twilight, in the night, at dawn. Far
down the arroyo, in the deepening red twilight, when the heat
Desert Gold |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: A LITTLE GIRL LOST
Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.
In the age of gold,
Free from winter's cold,
Youth and maiden bright,
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.
Once a youthful pair,
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: sinking lower, the silence of the room grew more and more solemn to me.
All at once Mina opened her eyes, and looking at me tenderly said,
"Jonathan, I want you to promise me something on your word of honor.
A promise made to me, but made holily in God's hearing, and not to be broken
though I should go down on my knees and implore you with bitter tears.
Quick, you must make it to me at once."
"Mina," I said, "a promise like that, I cannot make at once.
I may have no right to make it."
"But, dear one," she said, with such spiritual intensity that her eyes
were like pole stars, "it is I who wish it. And it is not for myself.
You can ask Dr. Van Helsing if I am not right. If he disagrees you
Dracula |
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 A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: horrors of more barbarous times, and with cold calculations of
premeditated science made these horrors worse. Our recoil from this deed
of hers and what it has brought upon the world is seen in our wish for a
League of Nations. The thought of any more battles, tenches, submarines,
air-raids, starvation, misery, is so unbearable to our bruised and
stricken minds, that we have put it into words whose import is, Let us
have no more of this! We have at least put it into words. That such
words, that such a League, can now grow into something more than words,
is the hope of many, the doubt of many, the belief of a few. It is the
belief of Mr. Wilson; of Mr. Taft; Lord Bryce; and of Lord Grey, a quiet
Englishman, whose statesmanship during those last ten murky days of July,
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