| 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: worried, and, what concerned her more vitally, he would think she had not
the courage to face a little dust. So Carley rode on.
The wind appeared to be gusty. It would blow hard awhile, then lull for a
few moments. On the whole, however, it increased in volume and persistence
until she was riding against a gale. She had now come to a bare, flat,
gravelly region, scant of cedars and brush, and far ahead she could see a
dull yellow pall rising high into the sky. It was a duststorm and it was
sweeping down on the wings of that gale. Carley remembered that somewhere
along this flat there was a log cabin which had before provided shelter for
her and Flo when they were caught in a rainstorm. It seemed unlikely that
she had passed by this cabin.
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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: believe that thou art rich; they will kill thee and find nothing. Yet
try at least to fling away this raiment no longer in fashion; be once
more as in the days of old!--Nay, thou art dead, and by thy own deed!'
"Is not this thy story?" so I ended. "Decrepit, toothless, shivering
crone, now forgotten, going thy ways without so much as a glance from
passers-by! Why art thou still alive? What doest thou in that beggar's
garb, uncomely and desired of none? Where are thy riches?--for what
were they spent? Where are thy treasures?--what great deeds hast thou
done?"
At this demand, the shriveled woman raised her bony form, flung off
her rags, and grew tall and radiant, smiling as she broke forth from
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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 The Iliad by Homer: thongs of ox-hide; the two men being now girt went into the
middle of the ring, and immediately fell to; heavily indeed did
they punish one another and lay about them with their brawny
fists. One could hear the horrid crashing of their jaws, and they
sweated from every pore of their skin. Presently Epeus came on
and gave Euryalus a blow on the jaw as he was looking round;
Euryalus could not keep his legs; they gave way under him in a
moment and he sprang up with a bound, as a fish leaps into the
air near some shore that is all bestrewn with sea-wrack, when
Boreas furs the top of the waves, and then falls back into deep
water. But noble Epeus caught hold of him and raised him up; his
The Iliad |
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 Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo: pink cheeks a third coating of powder.
Zoie sat bolt upright and began to sneeze. "Aggie," she said, "I
just hate you when you act like that." But suddenly she was
seized with a new idea.
"I wonder," she mused as she looked across the room at the soft,
pink sofa bathed in firelight, "I wonder if I shouldn't look
better on that couch under those roses."
Aggie was very emphatic in her opinion to the contrary.
"Certainly not!" she said.
"Then," decided Zoie with a mischievous smile, "I'll get Alfred
to carry me to the couch. That way I can get my arms around his
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