| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: did not recognize in him inferiority of literary taste half so
distinctly as I did simplicity of character and fearless
acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think
there are a great many gentlemen and others, who read with a mark
to keep their place, that really "hate books," but never had the
wit to find it out, or the manliness to own it. [ENTRE NOUS, I
always read with a mark.]
We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an "intellectual
man" was, as a matter of course, made up of nine-tenths, or
thereabouts, of book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But even if
he is actually so compounded, he need not read much. Society is a
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: wrapped in their blankets, sound asleep. Wetzel pressed the dog close to the
ground, laid aside his rifle, drew his tomahawk, and lying flat on his breast
commenced to work his way, inch by inch, toward the sleeping savages. The tall
ferns trembled as the hunter wormed his way among them, but there was no
sound, not a snapping of a twig nor a rustling of a leaf. The nightwind sighed
softly through the pines; it blew the bright sparks from the burning logs, and
fanned the embers into a red glow; it swept caressingly over the sleeping
savages, but it could not warn them that another wind, the Wind-of-Death, as
near at hand.
A quarter of an hour elapsed. Nearer and nearer; slowly but surely drew the
hunter. With what wonderful patience and self-control did this cold-blooded
Betty Zane |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: "What have you been doing since we met?" Ralph asked at length.
"Doing?" she pondered. "Walking in and out of other people's houses. I
wonder if these animals are happy?" she speculated, stopping before a
gray bear, who was philosophically playing with a tassel which once,
perhaps, formed part of a lady's parasol.
"I'm afraid Rodney didn't like my coming," Ralph remarked.
"No. But he'll soon get over that," she replied. The detachment
expressed by her voice puzzled Ralph, and he would have been glad if
she had explained her meaning further. But he was not going to press
her for explanations. Each moment was to be, as far as he could make
it, complete in itself, owing nothing of its happiness to
|
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 Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: And lay with sleepless eyes in the deadly ambuscade.
And oft in the starry even the song of morning rose,
What time the oven smoked in the country of their foes;
For oft to loving hearts, and waiting ears and sight,
The lads that went to forage returned not with the night.
Now first the children sickened, and then the women paled,
And the great arms of the warrior no more for war availed.
Hushed was the deep drum, discarded was the dance;
And those that met the priest now glanced at him askance.
The priest was a man of years, his eyes were ruby-red, (2)
He neither feared the dark nor the terrors of the dead,
Ballads |
