The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: Subsequent experiences with rattlesnakes taught me that my first
encounter was fortunate in circumstance. My big rattler was old,
and had led too easy a life; there was not much fight in him.
He had probably lived there for years, with a fat prairie-dog
for breakfast whenever he felt like it, a sheltered home,
even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and he had forgot that
the world doesn't owe rattlers a living. A snake of his size,
in fighting trim, would be more than any boy could handle.
So in reality it was a mock adventure; the game was fixed for me
by chance, as it probably was for many a dragon-slayer. I had been
adequately armed by Russian Peter; the snake was old and lazy;
My Antonia |
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 Falk by Joseph Conrad: slightest mental effort, by the mere volume of
sound. We had had several passages of arms. It
took me all I knew to guard the interests of my
owners--whom, nota bene, I had never seen--while
Siegers (who had made their acquaintance some
years before, during a business tour in Australia)
pretended to the knowledge of their innermost
minds, and, in the character of "our very good
friends," threw them perpetually at my head.
He looked at me with a jaundiced eye (there was
no love lost between us), and declared at once that
Falk |