| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: the very----"
"Kid, go on back home. I don't know whether it's too late or
not, but go anyway. If you've lost him I suppose it ain't any
more than you deserve; but I hope to God you don't get your
deserts this time. He's almost through. If he sees you going he
can't quit in the middle of his song to stop you. He'll know I
put you wise, and he'll prob'ly half kill me for it. But it's
worth it. You get."
And Terry--dazed, shaking, but grateful--fled. Down the noisy
aisle, up the stairs, to the street. Back to her rooming house.
Out again, with her suitcase, and into the right railroad station
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: dirt off the floor, and left it. That was our sitting-room
and kitchen, though there was nothing to sit upon but the
table, and no provision for a fire except a hole in the roof
of the room above, which had once contained the chimney of a
stove.
To that upper room we now proceeded. There were the eighteen
bunks in a double tier, nine on either hand, where from
eighteen to thirty-six miners had once snored together all
night long, John Stanley, perhaps, snoring loudest. There
was the roof, with a hole in it through which the sun now
shot an arrow. There was the floor, in much the same state
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: truer, is hard to determine. But no man of sense will put himself, or the
education of his mind, in the power of names: he will not condemn himself
to be an unreal thing, nor will he believe that everything is in a flux
like the water in a leaky vessel, or that the world is a man who has a
running at the nose. This doctrine may be true, Cratylus, but is also very
likely to be untrue; and therefore I would have you reflect while you are
young, and find out the truth, and when you know come and tell me. 'I have
thought, Socrates, and after a good deal of thinking I incline to
Heracleitus.' Then another day, my friend, you shall give me a lesson.
'Very good, Socrates, and I hope that you will continue to study these
things yourself.'
|
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 Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: masked, hard-ridin' devil. Ride! He was most as good as Jerry
Card. An', Bern, I've been wonderin' if you know--"
"Judkins, you're a good fellow," interrupted Venters. "Some day
I'll tell you a story. I've no time now. Take the horses to
Jane."
Judkins stared, and then, muttering to himself, he mounted Bells,
and stared again at Venters, and then, leading the other horses,
he rode into the grove and disappeared.
Once, long before, on the night Venters had carried Bess through
the canyon and up into Surprise Valley, he had experienced the
strangeness of faculties singularly, tinglingly acute. And now
Riders of the Purple Sage |
