| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: from the world that he once had known and loved so dearly. As for the new
world making a rude noise to the northward, he trusted that it might keep
away from Santa Ysabel, and he waited for the vessel that was overdue
with its package containing his single worldly luxury.
As the little, ancient bronze bell continued swinging in the tower, its
plaintive call reached something in the Padre's memory. Softly, absently,
he began to sing. He took up the slow strain not quite correctly, and
dropped it, and took it up again, always in cadence with the bell.
[musical score appears here]
At length he heard himself, and, glancing at the belfry, smiled a little.
"It is a pretty tune," he said, "and it always made me sorry for poor Fra
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: what they would have done without him. Miss Winchelsea's interest
and Fanny's enormous capacity for admiration were insatiable. They
never flagged--through pictures and sculpture galleries, immense
crowded churches, ruins and museums, Judas trees and prickly pears,
wine carts and palaces, they admired their way unflinchingly. They
never saw a stone pine or a eucalyptus but they named and admired it;
they never glimpsed Soracte but they exclaimed. Their common ways
were made wonderful by imaginative play. "Here Caesar may have
walked," they would say. "Raphael may have seen Soracte from this
very point." They happened on the tomb of Bibulus. "Old Bibulus,"
said the young man. "The oldest monument of Republican Rome!"
|
