| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: been so glad to see the morning. While dressing I cast gratified glances at
the ragged hole in the window. With the daylight my courage had returned,
and I began to have a sort of pride in my achievement.
"If that fellow had known how I can throw a baseball he'd have been
careful," I thought, a little cockily.
I went down-stairs into the office. The sleepy porter was mopping the
floor. Behind the desk stood a man so large that he made Buell seem small.
He was all shoulders and beard.
"Can I get breakfast?"
"Nobody's got a half-hitch on you, has they?" he replied, jerking a
monstrous thumb over his shoulder toward a door.
The Young Forester |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: give you more books to keep. You care for pictures, absolutely, no
more than you do for the bills pasted on your dead walls. There is
always room on the walls for the bills to be read,--never for the
pictures to be seen. You do not know what pictures you have (by
repute) in the country, nor whether they are false or true, nor
whether they are taken care of or not; in foreign countries, you
calmly see the noblest existing pictures in the world rotting in
abandoned wreck--(in Venice you saw the Austrian guns deliberately
pointed at the palaces containing them), and if you heard that all
the fine pictures in Europe were made into sand-bags to-morrow on
the Austrian forts, it would not trouble you so much as the chance
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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 Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: until we starved."
I tried in vain to thank him for these generous words, but he
was beforehand with me in a moment.
"I didn't bring you ashore to sound my praises," he interrupted.
"We understand one another now, that's all; and I guess you
can trust me. What I wished to speak about is more important,
and it's got to be faced. What are we to do about the Flying
Scud and the dime novel?"
"I really have thought nothing about that," I replied. "But I
expect I mean to get at the bottom of it; and if the bogus
Captain Trent is to be found on the earth's surface, I guess I
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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 Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: If she could have seen Wolfe, there was nothing about him to
frighten her. He lay quite still, his arms outstretched,
looking at the pearly stream of moonlight coming into the
window. I think in that one hour that came then he lived back
over all the years that had gone before. I think that all the
low, vile life, all his wrongs, all his starved hopes, came
then, and stung him with a farewell poison that made him sick
unto death. He made neither moan nor cry, only turned his worn
face now and then to the pure light, that seemed so far off, as
one that said, "How long, O Lord? how long?"
The hour was over at last. The moon, passing over her nightly
Life in the Iron-Mills |
