| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: taken into his church. Some of it was ready fitted. By that afternoon
Felipe and his choir could have rendered "Ah! se l' error t' ingombra"
without slip or falter.
Those were strange rehearsals of Il Trovatore upon this California shore.
For the Padre looked to Gaston to say when they went too fast or too
slow, and to correct their emphasis. And since it was hot, the little
Erard piano was carried each day out into the mission garden. There, in
the cloisters among the jessamine, the orange blossoms, the oleanders, in
the presence of the round yellow hills and the blue triangle of sea, the
Miserere was slowly learned. The Mexicans and Indians gathered, swarthy
and black-haired, around the tinkling instrument that Felipe played; and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: is confined to the ends of villages, denied the use of paths and
highways, and condemned to transport himself between his house and
coco-patch by water only, his very footprint being held infectious.
Fe'efe'e, being a creature of marshes and the sequel of malarial
fever, is not original in atolls. On the single isle of Makatea,
where the lagoon is now a marsh, the disease has made a home. Many
suffer; they are excluded (if Mr. Wilmot be right) from much of the
comfort of society; and it is believed they take a secret
vengeance. The defections of the sick are considered highly
poisonous. Early in the morning, it is narrated, aged and
malicious persons creep into the sleeping village, and stealthily
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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 Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: unblinded me. Looking back, it seemed to me that I had never done anything
except for myself all my days. I left the world. In due time I became a
priest and lived in my own country. But my worldly experience and my
secular education had given to my opinions a turn too liberal for the
place where my work was laid. I was soon advised concerning this by those
in authority over me. And since they could not change me and I could them,
yet wished to work and to teach, the New World was suggested, and I
volunteered to give the rest of my life to missions. It was soon found
that some one was needed here, and for this little place I sailed, and to
these humble people I have dedicated my service. They are pastoral
creatures of the soil. Their vineyard and cattle days are apt to be like
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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 Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes: mediaeval chivalry. But better fitted to satisfy the new demand
was the discovery by the alert Anglo-Normans perhaps in Brittany,
perhaps in the South of England, of a vast body of legendary
material which, so far as we know, had never before this century
received any elaborate literary treatment. The existence of the
literary demand and this discovery of the material for its prompt
satisfaction is one of the most remarkable coincidences in
iiterary history. It would seem that the pride of the Celtic
populations in a Celtic hero, aided and abetted by Geoffrey of
Monmouth, who first showed the romantic possibilities of the
material, made of the obscure British chieftain Arthur a world
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