| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: of Kalawao - you, the elect who would not, were the last man on
earth to collect and propagate gossip on the volunteer who would
and did.
I think I see you - for I try to see you in the flesh as I write
these sentences - I think I see you leap at the word pigsty, a
hyperbolical expression at the best. "He had no hand in the
reforms," he was "a coarse, dirty man"; these were your own words;
and you may think it possible that I am come to support you with
fresh evidence. In a sense, it is even so. Damien has been too
much depicted with a conventional halo and conventional features;
so drawn by men who perhaps had not the eye to remark or the pen to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: serene and careless of vagrants, and in his words only the ordinary
voice of banter spoke to the Governor. A good woman, it may well be,
would have guessed before this the sensitive soul in the blundering body,
but Barker saw just the familiar, whimsical, happy-go-lucky McLean of old
days, and so he went gayly and innocently on, treading upon holy ground.
"I've got it!" he exclaimed; "give your wife something."
The ruddy cow-puncher grinned. He had passed through the world of woman
with but few delays, rejoicing in informal and transient entanglements,
and he welcomed the turn which the conversation seemed now to be taking.
"If you'll give me her name and address," said he, with the future
entirely in his mind.
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