| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: his spurs home. For a minute hoofs pounded on the hard, white
road. Then the night swallowed him and the echo of his
disappearance.
"That was Bannister of the Shoshones and the Tetons," the girl's
white lips pronounced to Lieutenant Beecher.
"And I let him get away from me," the disappointed lad groaned.
"Why, I had him right in my hands. I could have throttled him as
easy. But how was I to know he would have nerve enough to come
rushing into a hotel full of soldiers hunting him?"
"Y'u have a very persistent cousin, Mr. Bannister," said
McWilliams, coming forward from the alcove with shining eyes.
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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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: of Madame de Dey, but also her last relation, the only being in the
world to whom the fears and hopes and joys of her life could be
naturally attached.
The late Comte de Dey was the last surviving scion of his family, and
she herself was the sole heiress of her own. Human interests and
projects combined, therefore, with the noblest deeds of the soul to
exalt in this mother's heart a sentiment that is always so strong in
the hearts of women. She had brought up this son with the utmost
difficulty, and with infinite pains, which rendered the youth still
dearer to her; a score of times the doctors had predicted his death,
but, confident in her own presentiments, her own unfailing hope, she
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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 When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: covered with blood.
Chapter XXII. IT WAS DELIRIUM
I was sure he was dead. He did not move, and when I caught his
hands and called him frantically, he did not hear me. And so,
with the horror over me, I half fell down the stairs and roused
Jim in the studio.
They all came with lights and blankets, and they carried him into
the tent and put him on the couch and tried to put whisky in his
mouth. But he could not swallow. And the silence became more and
more ominous until finally Anne got hysterical and cried, "He is
dead! Dead!" and collapsed on the roof.
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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 Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: the fires of the ephemeral diamonds produced by crystallizations of
the snow and ice, two beings crossed the fiord and flew along the base
of the Falberg, rising thence from ledge to ledge toward the summit.
What were they? human creatures, or two arrows? They might have been
taken for eider-ducks sailing in consort before the wind. Not the
boldest hunter nor the most superstitious fisherman would have
attributed to human beings the power to move safely along the slender
lines traced beneath the snow by the granite ledges, where yet this
couple glided with the terrifying dexterity of somnambulists who,
forgetting their own weight and the dangers of the slightest
deviation, hurry along a ridge-pole and keep their equilibrium by the
Seraphita |
