| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Had a city ever stood there, no sign of it remained. The
roughness and unevenness of the ground suggested something
of a great mass of debris hidden by the accumulation of
centuries of undergrowth.
I drew the short cutlass with which both officers and men of
the navy are, as you know, armed out of courtesy to the
traditions and memories of the past, and with its point dug
into the loam about the roots of the vegetation growing at
my feet.
The blade entered the soil for a matter of seven inches,
when it struck upon something stonelike. Digging about the
Lost Continent |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: seriously injured than Rust improved to the extent that they were
discharged. But Rust gained little or nothing. The nurse and doctor both
informed Carley that Rust brightened for her, but when she was gone he
lapsed into somber indifference. He did not care whether he ate or not, or
whether he got well or died.
"If I do pull out, where'll I go and what'll I do?" he once asked the
nurse.
Carley knew that Rust's hurt was more than loss of a leg, and she decided
to talk earnestly to him and try to win him to hope and effort. He had come
to have a sort of reverence for her. So, biding her time, she at length
found opportunity to approach his bed while his comrades were asleep or out
The Call of the Canyon |
