| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: straw, plucked from the common sweeping-
broom, in the lobes until the holes were healed
and ready for little gold rings.
When Emil came back from the village, he
lingered outside on the terrace with the boys.
Marie could hear him talking and strumming
on his guitar while Raoul Marcel sang falsetto.
She was vexed with him for staying out there.
It made her very nervous to hear him and not
to see him; for, certainly, she told herself, she
O Pioneers! |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: that he could grasp, not even a cane. He must have turned in this
direction to meet and greet the invader who had entered his room in
this unusual manner. Turned to meet him as a brave man would, with
no other weapon than the sacredness of his calling and his age.
But this had not been enough to protect the venerable priest. The
murderer must have made his thrust at once and his victim had sunk
down dying on the floor of the room in which he had spent so many
hours of quiet study, in which he had brought comfort and given
advice to so many anxious hearts; for dying he must have been - it
would be impossible for a man to lose so much blood and live.
"The struggle," thought the detective, "but was there a struggle?"
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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 Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: That very afternoon he set to work. Only one thing hindered him
upon beginning, though it in no wise checked his delight, and
that in the multiplicity of tasks planned to make a paradise out
of the valley he could not choose the one with which to begin. He
had to grow into the habit of passing from one dreamy pleasure to
another, like a bee going from flower to flower in the valley,
and he found this wandering habit likely to extend to his labors.
Nevertheless, he made a start.
At the outset he discovered Bess to be both a considerable help
in some ways and a very great hindrance in others. Her excitement
and joy were spurs, inspirations; but she was utterly
Riders of the Purple Sage |
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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: notion of getting on his horse's back, accommodating his motions to
the beast's, and becoming a centaur, half-man, half-horse. That
invention must have tended, in the first instance, as surely toward
democracy as did the invention of firearms. A tribe of riders must
have been always, more or less, equal and free. Equal because a man
on a horse would feel himself a man indeed; because the art of
riding called out an independence, a self-help, a skill, a
consciousness of power, a personal pride and vanity, which would
defy slavery. Free, because a tribe of riders might be defeated,
exterminated, but never enchained. They could never become gleboe
adscripti, bound to the soil, as long as they could take horse and
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