| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And fathoms my unprofitable thoughts.
Calvary
Friendless and faint, with martyred steps and slow,
Faint for the flesh, but for the spirit free,
Stung by the mob that came to see the show,
The Master toiled along to Calvary;
We gibed him, as he went, with houndish glee,
Till his dimmed eyes for us did overflow;
We cursed his vengeless hands thrice wretchedly, --
And this was nineteen hundred years ago.
But after nineteen hundred years the shame
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: a lout, a simple fellow who spoke only Flemish - but could hear in many
tongues. Watch him standing at crossroads and marveling at big guns that
rumble by.
At first Henri had wished, having learned of an attack, to be among those
who repelled it. Then one day his King had sent for him to come to that
little viilage which was now his capital city.
He had been sent in alone and had found the King at the table, writing.
Henri bowed and waited. They were not unlike, these two men, only Henri
was younger and lighter, and where the King's eyes were gray Henri's were
blue. Such a queer setting for a king it was - a tawdry summer home,
ill-heated and cheaply furnished. But by the presence of Belgium's man
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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 Lysis by Plato: they are free from the conceit of knowledge. (Compare Chrm.) The dialogue
is what would be called in the language of Thrasyllus tentative or
inquisitive. The subject is continued in the Phaedrus and Symposium, and
treated, with a manifest reference to the Lysis, in the eighth and ninth
books of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. As in other writings of
Plato (for example, the Republic), there is a progress from unconscious
morality, illustrated by the friendship of the two youths, and also by the
sayings of the poets ('who are our fathers in wisdom,' and yet only tell us
half the truth, and in this particular instance are not much improved upon
by the philosophers), to a more comprehensive notion of friendship. This,
however, is far from being cleared of its perplexity. Two notions appear
Lysis |
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 Betty Zane by Zane Grey: remarkable. He could easily have deceived them and made them believe he was
content in captivity. Probably, in attempting to escape again, he has been
killed as was poor Andrew."
Brother and sister gazed with dark, sad eyes into the fire, now burned down to
a glowing bed of coals. The silence remained unbroken save for the moan of the
rising wind outside, the rattle of hail, and the patter of rain drops on the
roof.
CHAPTER II.
Fort Henry stood on a bluff overlooking the river and commanded a fine view of
the surrounding country. In shape it was a parallelogram, being about three
hundred and fifty-six feet in length, and one hundred and fifty in width.
Betty Zane |
