| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: hollows of the hill, sounded faintly, and aroused no echo--the echo
was in his own heart. The Provencal was twenty-two years old:--he
loaded his carbine.
"There'll be time enough," he said to himself, laying on the ground
the weapon which alone could bring him deliverance.
Viewing alternately the dark expanse of the desert and the blue
expanse of the sky, the soldier dreamed of France--he smelled with
delight the gutters of Paris--he remembered the towns through which he
had passed, the faces of his comrades, the most minute details of his
life. His Southern fancy soon showed him the stones of his beloved
Provence, in the play of the heat which undulated above the wide
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: milk given daily. When back on the road again, having but bent a
mud guard against a fense, I was calmer.
"How do I know you will bring it back?" I asked, stareing at him fixedly.
"Oh, now see here," he said, straightening his necktie, "I may be
a Theif, but I am not that kind of a Theif. I play for big stakes
or nothing."
I then remembered that there was a large dinner that night and that
mother would have her jewelery out from the safe deposit, and
father's pearl studs et cetera. I turned pale, but he did not
notice it, being busy counting out Twenty-five dollars in small bills.
I am one to think quickly, but with precicion. So I said:
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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 Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: he his own grandmother? The recent researches of Mr. M`Lennan
and Mr. Herbert Spencer have served to connect this feeling
with the primeval worship of ancestors and with the savage
customs of totemism.[71]
[71] M`Lennan, "The Worship of Animals and Plants,"
Fortnightly Review, N. S. Vol. VI. pp. 407-427, 562-582, Vol.
VII. pp 194-216; Spencer, "The Origin of Animal Worship," Id.
Vol. VII. pp. 535-550, reprinted in his Recent Discussions in
Science, etc., pp. 31-56.
The worship of ancestors seems to have been every where the
oldest systematized form of fetichistic religion. The
Myths and Myth-Makers |
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 Hellenica by Xenophon: voyage to land certain Zacynthian exiles[2] on their native soil,
whereupon the Zacynthian city party sent to Lacedaemon and complained
of the treatment they had received from Timotheus; and the
Lacedaemonians, without further consideration, decided that the
Athenians were in the wrong, and proceeded to equip another navy, and
at length collected from Laconia itself, from Corinth, Leucas,[3]
Ambracia, Elis, Zacynthus, Achaia, Epidaurus, Troezen, Hermione, and
Halieis, a force amounting to sixty sail. In command of this squadron
they appointed Mnasippus admiral, with orders to attack Corcyra, and
in general to look after their interests in those seas. They,
moreover, sent an embassy to Dionysius, instructing him that his
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