| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: here and there the outline of a wooded sugar-loaf in black, here
and there a white irregular patch to represent a cultivated farm,
and here and there a blot where the Loire, the Gazeille, or the
Laussonne wandered in a gorge.
Soon we were on a high-road, and surprise seized on my mind as I
beheld a village of some magnitude close at hand; for I had been
told that the neighbourhood of the lake was uninhabited except by
trout. The road smoked in the twilight with children driving home
cattle from the fields; and a pair of mounted stride-legged women,
hat and cap and all, dashed past me at a hammering trot from the
canton where they had been to church and market. I asked one of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: confusion. And like these fresh green things were the dozens of
babies, tots, toddlers, noisy urchins, laughing girls, a whole
multitude of children of one family. For Collier Brandt, the
father of all this numerous progeny, was a Mormon with four
wives.
The big house where they lived was old, solid, picturesque the
lower part built of logs, the upper of rough clapboards, with
vines growing up the outside stone chimneys. There were many
wooden-shuttered windows, and one pretentious window of glass
proudly curtained in white. As this house had four mistresses, it
likewise had four separate sections, not one of which
Riders of the Purple Sage |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: at his problem. He had been trying to find a single process to replace
the various operations of pounding and maceration to which all flax or
cotton or rags, any vegetable fibre, in fact, must be subjected; and
as he went to Petit-Claud's office, he abstractedly chewed a bit of
nettle stalk that had been steeping in water. On his way home,
tolerably satisfied with his interview, he felt a little pellet
sticking between his teeth. He laid it on his hand, flattened it out,
and saw that the pulp was far superior to any previous result. The
want of cohesion is the great drawback of all vegetable fibre; straw,
for instance, yields a very brittle paper, which may almost be called
metallic and resonant. These chances only befall bold inquirers into
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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 The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: from you. It was decided that Tasor should accompany A-Kor in an
attempt to reach the camp of U-Thor, the great jed of Manatos,
and exact from him the assurances you required. Then U-Thor was
to return and take food to you and the Princess of Helium. I
accompanied them. We won through easily and found U-Thor more
than willing to respect your every wish, but when Tasor would
have returned to you the way was blocked by the warriors of
O-Tar. Then it was that I volunteered to come to you and report
and find food and drink and then go forth among the Gatholian
slaves of Manator and prepare them for their part in the plan
that U-Thor and Tasor conceived."
The Chessmen of Mars |
