| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: be great, had been his unrelenting purpose.
He knew he must sacrifice the Christians, or eventually lose his own power. He
had no false ideas about the converted Indians. He knew they were innocent;
that they were a thousand times better off than the pagan Indians; that they
had never harmed him, nor would they ever do so; but if he allowed them to
spread their religion there was an end of Simon Girty.
His decision was characteristic of the man. He would sacrifice any one, or
all, to retain his supremacy. He knew the fulfillment of the decree as laid
down by Pipe and Half King would be known as his work. His name, infamous now,
would have an additional horror, and ever be remembered by posterity in
unspeakable loathing, in unsoftening wrath. He knew this, and deep down in his
The Spirit of the Border |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: feeble beverage, but very pleasant to the taste.
What with dinner and coffee, it was long past three before I left
St. Germain de Calberte. I went down beside the Gardon of Mialet,
a great glaring watercourse devoid of water, and through St.
Etienne de Vallee Francaise, or Val Francesque, as they used to
call it; and towards evening began to ascend the hill of St.
Pierre. It was a long and steep ascent. Behind me an empty
carriage returning to St. Jean du Gard kept hard upon my tracks,
and near the summit overtook me. The driver, like the rest of the
world, was sure I was a pedlar; but, unlike others, he was sure of
what I had to sell. He had noticed the blue wool which hung out of
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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 Purse by Honore de Balzac: knowing Adelaide, their lives were one life. From early morning
the young girl, hearing footsteps overhead, could say to herself,
"He is there." When Hippolyte went home to his mother at the
dinner hour he never failed to look in on his neighbors, and in
the evening he flew there at the accustomed hour with a lover's
punctuality. Thus the most tyrannical woman or the most ambitious
in the matter of love could not have found the smallest fault
with the young painter. And Adelaide tasted of unmixed and
unbounded happiness as she saw the fullest realization of the
ideal of which, at her age, it is so natural to dream.
The old gentleman now came more rarely; Hippolyte, who had been
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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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: and consider that I have relations to those millions as to so many
millions of men, and not of mere brute or inanimate things, I see
that appeal is possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the
Maker of them, and, secondly, from them to themselves. But, if I
put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire
or to the Maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I
could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men
as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in
some respects, to my requisitions and expectations of what they and
I ought to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should
endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the
Walden |
