| 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: stirred in Gale as he watched the trio. They showed not the
slightest indication of breaking camp. One fellow, evidently the
leader, packed a gun at his hip, the only weapon in sight. Gale
noted this with speculative eyes. The raiders had slept inside
the little adobe house, and had not yet brought out the carbines.
Next Gale swept his gaze to the corral, in which he saw more than
a dozen horses, some of them fine animals. They were stamping
and whistling, fighting one another, and pawing the dirt. This
was entirely natural behavior for desert horses penned in when they
wanted to get at water and grass.
But suddenly one of the blacks, a big, shaggy fellow, shot up his
Desert Gold |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: their soul, as well as of the frippery under which they disguise their
defects--without manners and without stays; they are not beautiful.
"We saw a great deal of mud, a great deal of dirt, under the waters of
the world when we were aground for a time on the shoals of the Maison
Vauquer.--What we saw there was nothing. Since I have gone into high
society, I have seen monsters dressed in satin, Michonneaus in white
gloves, Poirets bedizened with orders, fine gentlemen doing more
usurious business than old Gobseck! To the shame of mankind, when I
have wanted to shake hands with Virtue, I have found her shivering in
a loft, persecuted by calumny, half-starving on a income or a salary
of fifteen hundred francs a year, and regarded as crazy, or eccentric,
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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 The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: his straw-colored Johannisburger. His name was Hermann, which is that
of most Germans whom authors bring upon their scene. Like a man who
does nothing frivolously, he was sitting squarely at the banker's
table and eating with that Teutonic appetite so celebrated throughout
Europe, saying, in fact, a conscientious farewell to the cookery of
the great Careme.
To do honor to his guest the master of the house had invited a few
intimate friends, capitalists or merchants, and several agreeable and
pretty women, whose pleasant chatter and frank manners were in harmony
with German cordiality. Really, if you could have seen, as I saw, this
joyous gathering of persons who had drawn in their commercial claws,
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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 School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: Miss Sallow is a Relation of mine by marriage, and, as for
her Person great allowance is to be made--for, let me tell you
a woman labours under many disadvantages who tries to pass
for a girl at six-and-thirty.
MRS. CANDOUR. Tho', surely she is handsome still--and for the
weakness in her eyes considering how much she reads by candle-light
it is not to be wonder'd at.
LADY SNEERWELL. True and then as to her manner--upon my word
I think it is particularly graceful considering she never had the
least Education[:] for you know her Mother was a Welch milliner,
and her Father a sugar-Baker at Bristow.--
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