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: the sunlight through the blood and flesh of her eyelids. It was red, as
rare a hue as the blue of sky. So piercing did it grow that she had to
shade her eyes with her arm.
Again the strange, rapt glow suffused her body. Never in all her life had
she been so absolutely alone. She might as well have been in her grave. She
might have been dead to all earthy things and reveling in spirit in the
glory of the physical that had escaped her in life. And she abandoned
herself to this influence.
She loved these dry, dusty cinders; she loved the crater here hidden from
all save birds; she loved the desert, the earth-above all, the sun. She was
a product of the earth--a creation of the sun. She had been an
 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 Hellenica by Xenophon: by the Tegeans in the first clash of the engagement. The troops next
encountered by the Lacedaemonians were the Argives retiring. These
they fell foul of, and the senior polemarch was just on the point of
closing with them "breast to breast" when some one, it is said,
shouted, "Let their front ranks pass." This was done, and as the
Argives raced past, their enemies thrust at their unprotected[20]
sides and killed many of them. The Corinthians were caught in the same
way as they retired, and when their turn had passed, once more the
Lacedaemonians lit upon a portion of the Theban division retiring from
the pursuit, and strewed the field with their dead. The end of it all
was that the defeated troops in the first instance made for safety to
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