| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: A silvery thread among the stars, it soon drifted low beneath the
horizon.
Upon the ground the land was pitchy black. There are night
people on the plain who love the dark. Amid the black level land
they meet to frolic under the stars. Then when their sharp ears
hear any strange footfalls nigh they scamper away into the deep
shadows of night. There they are safely hid from all dangers, they
think.
Thus it was that one very black night, afar off from the edge
of the level land, out of the wooded river bottom glided forth two
balls of fire. They came farther and farther into the level land.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: remember the cut of your beard, which I have the misfortune
to dislike. Here, sir, is a sovereign; which I very
willingly advance to you, on the single condition that you
shave your chin.'
M'Guire grasped the coin without a word; cast it to the
cabman, calling out to him to keep the change; bounded down
the steps, flung the bag far forth into the river, and fell
headlong after it. He was plucked from a watery grave, it is
believed, by the hands of Mr. Godall. Even as he was being
hoisted dripping to the shore, a dull and choked explosion
shook the solid masonry of the Embankment, and far out in the
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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 Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill
of pen or pencil. During ten or fifteen years I had been, as it were,
dragging a heavy chain which no strength of mine could break;
I was not only a slave, but a slave for life. I might become a husband,
a father, an aged man, but through all, from birth to death, from the cradle
to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made
to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet
my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult.
Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself
the question, May not my condition after all be God's work,
and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty?
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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 Glasses by Henry James: a subtle acknowledgment that she contrived to make of the rights,
on the part of others, that such beauty as hers created? I was in
a position to answer that question after Mrs. Meldrum had answered
a few of mine.
CHAPTER II
Flora Saunt, the only daughter of an old soldier, had lost both her
parents, her mother within a few months. Mrs. Meldrum had known
them, disapproved of them, considerably avoided them: she had
watched the girl, off and on, from her early childhood. Flora,
just twenty, was extraordinarily alone in the world--so alone that
she had no natural chaperon, no one to stay with but a mercenary
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