| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: what he saw there, but somehow not so bad as his long fear of it
had been. He saw everything clearly now. He had a feeling that he
had made the best of it, that he had lived the sort of life he was
meant to live, and for half an hour he sat staring at the revolver.
But he told himself that was not the way, so he went downstairs and
took a cab to the ferry.
When Paul arrived in Newark he got off the train and took
another cab, directing the driver to follow the Pennsylvania
tracks out of the town. The snow lay heavy on the roadways and
had drifted deep in the open fields. Only here and there the
dead grass or dried weed stalks projected, singularly black,
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: in a sip, and the Flemish schoppen were too much for him. He
fell into a drunken sleep, and did not wake up until noon next
day, at which he was so mortified that he had not the face to
go back to hell at all. So Gambrinus lived on tranquilly for a
century or two, and drank so much beer that he turned into a
beer-barrel.[121]
[121] See Deulin, Contes d'un Buveur de Biere, pp. 3-29.
The character of gullibility attributed to the Devil in these
legends is probably derived from the Trolls, or "night-folk,"
of Northern mythology. In most respects the Trolls resemble
the Teutonic elves and fairies, and the Jinn or Efreets of the
Myths and Myth-Makers |
