| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: tang of cedar and sage on the air and that indefinable fragrance peculiar
to the canyon country of Arizona. How it brought back to Carley remembrance
of Oak Creek! In the west, across the purple notches of the abyss, a dull
gold flare showed where the sun had gone down.
In the morning at eight o'clock there were great irregular black shadows
under the domes and peaks and escarpments. Bright Angel Canyon was all
dark, showing dimly its ragged lines. At noon there were no shadows and all
the colossal gorge lay glaring under the sun. In the evening Carley watched
the Canyon as again the sun was setting.
Deep dark-blue shadows, like purple sails of immense ships, in wonderful
contrast with the bright sunlit slopes, grew and rose toward the east, down
The Call of the Canyon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: with a companion on a visit of ceremony to Massasoit on foot through
the woods, and arrived tired and hungry at his lodge, they were well
received by the king, but nothing was said about eating that day.
When the night arrived, to quote their own words -- "He laid us on
the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the
other, it being only planks laid a foot from the ground and a thin
mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed
by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of
our journey." At one o'clock the next day Massasoit "brought two
fishes that he had shot," about thrice as big as a bream. "These
being boiled, there were at least forty looked for a share in them;
Walden |
