| 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: adobe style and that sort of thing. The jail's real comfy, too."
"Would you like something to eat, sir?" presently asked Frank
timidly.
"Would I? Why, I'm hungry enough to eat a leather mail-sack. Trot
on your grub, young man, and watch my smoke."
Bucky did ample justice to the sandwiches and lemonade the lad
set in front of him, but he ate with a wary eye on a possible
insurrection on the part of his prisoner.
"I'm a new man," he announced briskly, when he had finished.
"That veal loaf sandwich went sure to the right spot. If you had
been a young lady instead of a boy you couldn't fix things up
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White: winter, as well. We had our first round-up, found the natural
increase much in excess of the loss by Indians, and extended our
holdings up over the Rock Creek country. We witnessed the start
of many Indian campaigns, participated in a few little brushes
with the Chiricahuas, saw the beginning of the cattle-rustling.
A man had not much opportunity to think of anything but what he
had right on hand, but I found time for a few speculations on
Tim. I wondered how he looked now, and what he was doing, and
how in blazes he managed to get away with fifty thousand a year.
And then one Sunday in June, while I was lying on my bunk, Tim
pushed open the door and walked in. I was young, but I'd seen a
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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 The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: "Ever seen one like it?" he asked.
"Not exactly," I confessed. "It appears to have been deeply cauterized."
"Right! Very deeply!" he rapped. "A barb steeped in the venom
of a hamadryad went in there!"
A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention
of that most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.
"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down again,
"and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge.
I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that stank
with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated.
Here's the point. It was not an accident!"
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
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 Statesman by Plato: than with the Republic, and the Laws had been received, as they ought to
be, on the authority of Aristotle and on the ground of their intrinsic
excellence, as an undoubted work of Plato. The detailed consideration of
the genuineness and order of the Platonic dialogues has been reserved for
another place: a few of the reasons for defending the Sophist and
Statesman may be given here.
1. The excellence, importance, and metaphysical originality of the two
dialogues: no works at once so good and of such length are known to have
proceeded from the hands of a forger.
2. The resemblances in them to other dialogues of Plato are such as might
be expected to be found in works of the same author, and not in those of an
Statesman |
