| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lone Star Ranger by Zane Grey: or kill Buck Duane, and that this message was simply an
original and striking ruse, the daring of which might appeal to
certain outlaws.
But it did not appeal to Duane. His curiosity was aroused; it
did not, however, tempt him to any foolhardy act. He turned
southwest and rode a hundred miles until he again reached the
sparsely settled country. Here he heard no more of rangers. It
was a barren region he had never but once ridden through, and
that ride had cost him dear. He had been compelled to shoot his
way out. Outlaws were not in accord with the few ranchers and
their cowboys who ranged there. He learned that both outlaws
The Lone Star Ranger |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: and go out of a theatre where my plays are being performed. Even
among my own schoolmasters I can recollect a few whose classes
interested me, and whom I should certainly have pestered for
information and instruction if I could have got into any decent human
relationship with them, and if they had not been compelled by their
position to defend themselves as carefully against such advances as
against furtive attempts to hurt them accidentally in the football
field or smash their hats with a clod from behind a wall. But these
rare cases actually do more harm than good; for they encourage us to
pretend that all schoolmasters are like that. Of what use is it to us
that there are always somewhere two or three teachers of children
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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 Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: "So," said Alma Pflugel at last, and rose and walked
slowly to the window and stood looking out at the
wind-swept garden. That window, with its many tiny panes,
once had looked out across a wilderness, with an Indian
camp not far away. Grossmutter Pflugel had sat at that
window many a bitter winter night, with her baby in her
arms, watching and waiting for the young husband who was
urging his ox-team across the ice of Lake Michigan in the
teeth of a raging blizzard.
The little, low-ceilinged room was very still. I
looked at Alma Pflugel standing there at the window in
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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 Bucolics by Virgil: So much delights me, nor wave-smitten beach,
Nor streams that race adown their bouldered beds.
MENALCAS
First this frail hemlock-stalk to you I give,
Which taught me "Corydon with love was fired
For fair Alexis," ay, and this beside,
"Who owns the flock?- Meliboeus?"
MOPSUS
But take you
This shepherd's crook, which, howso hard he begged,
Antigenes, then worthy to be loved,
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