| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lone Star Ranger by Zane Grey: an unusual adventure. The following day he spent in much the
same way, though on one occasion he told Laramie he was looking
for a man. The innkeeper grew a little less furtive and
reticent after that. He would answer casual queries, and it did
not take Duane long to learn that Laramie had seen better
days--that he was now broken, bitter, and hard. Some one had
wronged him.
Several days passed. Duane did not succeed in getting any
closer to Laramie, but he found the idlers on the corners and
in front of the stores unsuspicious and willing to talk. It did
not take him long to find out that Fairdale stood parallel with
The Lone Star Ranger |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: three cakes; but no one little girl ever had more than every other
little girl.
Always Sister Angela sat a little way off from the row of the little
girls. She always sat on a bench under the great magnoliatree and
watched the tiny girls as they ate their tiny cakes.
And always the pink checked towel waved itself ever so softly to and
fro on the lowest limb of the arbor-vitae-tree, for that was the way
that pink checked towels did to help to dry themselves after helping
to dry so many little pink fingers. Often, so often, little brown
sparrows came hopping to the gravel to pick up any tiny crumbs of
cake that the little girls dropped, but you may be sure that they
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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 Altar of the Dead by Henry James: had imposed upon him hugely, though she had known it as little as
he. All this later past came back to him as a time grotesquely
misspent. Such at least were his first reflexions; after a while
he found himself more divided and only, as the end of it, more
troubled. He imagined, recalled, reconstituted, figured out for
himself the truth she had refused to give him; the effect of which
was to make her seem to him only more saturated with her fate. He
felt her spirit, through the whole strangeness, finer than his own
to the very degree in which she might have been, in which she
certainly had been, more wronged. A women, when wronged, was
always more wronged than a man, and there were conditions when the
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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 The Master Key by L. Frank Baum: you the Character Marker. It consists of this pair of spectacles.
While you wear them every one you meet will be marked upon the
forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. The good will
bear the letter 'G,' the evil the letter 'E.' The wise will be marked
with a 'W' and the foolish with an 'F.' The kind will show a 'K' upon
their foreheads and the cruel a letter 'C.' Thus you may determine by
a single look the true natures of all those you encounter."
"And are these, also, electrical in their construction?" asked the
boy, as he took the spectacles.
"Certainly. Goodness, wisdom and kindness are natural forces,
creating character. For this reason men are not always to blame for
The Master Key |
