| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: to an engagement?"
"Depends what it is," replied Bucky cautiously.
"My foreman's quit on me. Gone into business for himself. I'm
looking for a good man. Will you be my major-domo?"
Bucky's heart leaped. He had been thinking of how he must report
almost immediately to HurryUp Millikan, of the rangers. Now, he
could resign from that body and stay near his love. Certainly
things were coming his way.
"I'd like to try it, seh," he answered. "I may not make good, but
I sure would like to have a chance at it."
"Make good! Of course you'll make good. You're the best man in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: [The Fourth Knight passes over.]
SIMONIDES.
What is the fourth?
THALIARD.
A burning torch that's turned upside down;
The word, 'Quod me alit, me extinguit.'
SIMONIDES.
Which shows that beauty hath his power and will,
Which can as well inflame as it can kill.
[The Fifth Knight passes over.]
THALIARD.
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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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: ignorance), which renders life impossible to one species, possible
to another. And it is a still more solemn thought to him, that it
was not always so; that aeons and ages back, that rock which he
passed a thousand feet below was fringed, not as now with fern and
blue bugle, and white bramble-flowers, but perhaps with the alp-
rose and the "gemsen-kraut" of Mont Blanc, at least with Alpine
Saxifrages which have now retreated a thousand feet up the mountain
side, and with the blue Snow-Gentian, and the Canadian Sedum, which
have all but vanished out of the British Isles. And what is it
which tells him that strange story? Yon smooth and rounded surface
of rock, polished, remark, across the strata and against the grain;
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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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor,
By surging worshippers thick-thronged of yore,
A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb,
The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea--
For these alone the finials fret the skies,
The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free,
While from the triple portals, with grave eyes,
Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity,
The cloud of witnesses still testifies.
II.
The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatize
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