| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: `I dedicated it to him.'
She threw her arms around me, and her dear face was all wet with tears.
I stood watching their white dresses glimmer smaller and smaller
down the sidewalk as they went away. I have had no other success
that pulled at my heartstrings like that one.
XIV
THE DAY AFTER COMMENCEMENT I moved my books and desk upstairs, to an empty
room where I should be undisturbed, and I fell to studying in earnest.
I worked off a year's trigonometry that summer, and began Virgil alone.
Morning after morning I used to pace up and down my sunny little room,
looking off at the distant river bluffs and the roll of the blond
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: orations, and conducting the most impassioned interviews, by
the way. A little farther on, and it is as like as not he
will begin to sing. And well for him, supposing him to be no
great master in that art, if he stumble across no stolid
peasant at a corner; for on such an occasion, I scarcely know
which is the more troubled, or whether it is worse to suffer
the confusion of your troubadour, or the unfeigned alarm of
your clown. A sedentary population, accustomed, besides, to
the strange mechanical bearing of the common tramp, can in no
wise explain to itself the gaiety of these passers-by. I knew
one man who was arrested as a runaway lunatic, because,
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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 Lin McLean by Owen Wister: window, and, being disappointed in what he expected to see remarked,
sulkily, "Do yu' figure I care what sort of a lookin' girl is stuck on
yu' in Evanston?" And upon this young Lin laughed so loudly that his
friend told him he had never seen a man get so foolish in three years.
By-and-by they were in Utah, and, in the company of Ogden friends, forgot
prospecting. Later they resumed freight trains and journeyed north In
Idaho they said good-bye to the train hands in the caboose, and came to
Little Camas, and so among the mountains near Feather Creek. Here the
berries were of several sorts, and growing riper each day, and the bears
in the timber above knew this, and came down punctually with the season,
making variety in the otherwise even life of the prospectors. It was now
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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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: at which the besiegers gave a general salvo from their cannon at
all their forts; but the besieged gave them a return, for they
sallied out in the night, attacked Barkstead's fort, scarce
finished, with such fury, that they twice entered the work sword in
hand, killed most part of the defendants, and spoiled part of the
forts cast up; but fresh forces coming up, they retired with little
loss, bringing eight prisoners, and having slain, as they reported,
above 100.
On the second, Lord Fairfax offered exchange for Sir William Masham
in particular, and afterwards for other prisoners, but the Lord
Goring refused.
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