| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: he broke water for a bug. Get me a pole and some bugs or worms!"
When I took out my little case and showed the fishing-line, Herky-Jerky
said he would find me some bait.
While he was absent I studied that spring with new and awakened eyes. It
was round and very deep, and the water bulged up in great greenish swirls.
The outlet was a narrow little cleft through which the water flowed slowly,
as though it did not want to take its freedom. The rush and roar came from
the gorge below.
Herky-Jerky returned with a long, slender pole. It was as pliant as a
buggy-whip, and once trimmed and rigged it was far from being a poor
tackle. Herky-Jerky watched me with extreme attention, all the time
The Young Forester |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: leaping, stabbing, dropping to his knee, and using indifferently
sword and dagger, foot and hand, with the same unshaken courage and
feverish energy and speed.
But that ear-piercing summons had been heard at last. There was a
muffled rushing in the snow; and in a good hour for Dick, who saw
the sword-points glitter already at his throat, there poured forth
out of the wood upon both sides a disorderly torrent of mounted
men-at-arms, each cased in iron, and with visor lowered, each
bearing his lance in rest, or his sword bared and raised, and each
carrying, so to speak, a passenger, in the shape of an archer or
page, who leaped one after another from their perches, and had
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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 Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: her breast and nothing but will remained. She felt now, as
then, the capacity to act with more than her accustomed
resolution, though all that was within her seemed boiling up
into her brain. As for Philip, all seemed a mere negation;
there was a vacuum where his place had been. At most the
thought of him came to her as some strange, vague thrill of
added torture, penetrating her soul and then passing; just as
ever and anon there came the sound of the fog-whistle on
Brenton's Reef, miles away, piercing the dull air with its
shrill and desolate wail, then dying into silence.
What a hopeless cloud lay upon them all forever,--upon Kate,
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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 Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: pened?"
"Life has moved slowly in Sitka during your
absence, Excellency," replied Davidov. "There has
been little work done on the Avos. It will not be
finished for a month or six weeks."
Then, had the young men been possessed by a
not infrequent mood, they would have glowed with
a sense of just satisfaction. Rezanov felt himself
turn so white that he wheeled about and left the
tent. A month or six weeks! And the speed and
safety of his journey across Siberia depended upon
Rezanov |
