| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: position, though we lost sixty men. That night we lay down to rest by great
fires which we built, to prevent night surprises.
"Early next morning we resumed the fight. I saw Simon Girty on his white
horse. He was urging and cheering the Indians on to desperate fighting. Their
fire became so deadly that we were forced to retreat. In the afternoon Slover,
who had been out scouting, returned with the information that a mounted force
was approaching, and that he believed they were the reinforcements which Col.
Crawford expected. The reinforcements came up and proved to be Butler's
British rangers from Detroit. This stunned Crawford's soldiers. The fire of
the enemy became hotter and hotter. Our men were falling like leaves around
us. They threw aside their rifles and ran, many of them right into the hands
Betty Zane |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: so free an agent and get rid of their own charge. They were
delighted when they saw Morgan take so to his kind playfellow, and
could think of no higher praise for the young man. It was strange
how they contrived to reconcile the appearance, and indeed the
essential fact, of adoring the child with their eagerness to wash
their hands of him. Did they want to get rid of him before he
should find them out? Pemberton was finding them out month by
month. The boy's fond family, however this might be, turned their
backs with exaggerated delicacy, as if to avoid the reproach of
interfering. Seeing in time how little he had in common with them
- it was by THEM he first observed it; they proclaimed it with
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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 Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: tides have been charging them for twenty years, and gradually
torn away the soil above and beneath their roots. The sand
around,--soft beneath and thinly crusted upon the surface,--is
everywhere pierced with holes made by a beautifully mottled and
semi-diaphanous crab, with hairy legs, big staring eyes, and
milk-white claws;--while in the green sedges beyond there is a
perpetual rustling, as of some strong wind beating among reeds:
a marvellous creeping of "fiddlers," which the inexperienced
visitor might at first mistake for so many peculiar beetles, as
they run about sideways, each with his huge single claw folded
upon his body like a wing-case. Year by year that rustling strip
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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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: known?--What should be done? Neither, indeed, could the earlier Greek
sages. Not one of them, of any school whatsoever--from the semi-mythic
Seven Sages to Plato and Aristotle--but finds it necessary to consider
not in passing, but as the great object of research, questions
concerning the gods:- whether they are real or not; one or many;
personal or impersonal; cosmic, and parts of the universe, or organisers
and rulers of it; in relation to man, or without relation to him. Even
in those who flatly deny the existence of the gods, even in Lucretius
himself, these questions have to be considered, before the question,
What is man? can get any solution at all. On the answer given to them
is found to depend intimately the answer to the question, What is the
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