| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: Girty's got a place near the Delaware camp somewheres. I've tried to find it a
good many times. He's took more'n one white lass there, an' nobody ever seen
her agin."
"Fiend! To think of a white woman, maybe a girl like Nell Wells, at the mercy
of those red devils!"
"Young fellar, don't go wrong. I'll allow Injuns is bad enough; but I never
hearn tell of one abusin' a white woman, as mayhap you mean. Injuns marry
white women sometimes; kill an' scalp 'em often, but that's all. It's men of
our own color, renegades like this Girty, as do worse'n murder."
Here was the amazing circumstance of Lewis Wetzel, the acknowledged unsatiable
foe of all redmen, speaking a good word for his enemies. Joe was so
The Spirit of the Border |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: distance, and to be in the same state and alike?
True.
But when you approach them, they appear to be many and different; and
because of the appearance of the difference, different in kind from, and
unlike, themselves?
True.
And so must the particles appear to be like and unlike themselves and each
other.
Certainly.
And must they not be the same and yet different from one another, and in
contact with themselves, although they are separated, and having every sort
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: me-thinkes I am maruellous hairy about the face. And I
am such a tender asse, if my haire do but tickle me, I must
scratch
Tita. What, wilt thou heare some musicke, my sweet
loue
Clow. I haue a reasonable good eare in musicke. Let
vs haue the tongs and the bones.
Musicke Tongs, Rurall Musicke.
Tita. Or say sweete Loue, what thou desirest to eat
Clowne. Truly a pecke of Prouender; I could munch
your good dry Oates. Me-thinkes I haue a great desire
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
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 Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: about it. A fine, brownish hair covered the chest and abdomen,
and the face, the palms of the hands, the feet, the shoulders and
back were practically hairless. The creature must have been
about the height of a fair sized man; its features were similar
to those of a man; yet had it been a man?
I could not say, for it resembled an ape no more than it did
a man. Its large toes protruded laterally as do those of the
semiarboreal peoples of Borneo, the Philippines and other remote
regions where low types still persist. The countenance might
have been that of a cross between Pithecanthropus, the Java
ape-man, and a daughter of the Piltdown race of prehistoric Sussex.
The Land that Time Forgot |
