| 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: another."
"You have to be awful careful here. Some one ought to have told
you," he said indignantly.
"Oh, they told me, but of course I knew best," she replied, with
quick scorn of her own self-sufficiency.
"Well, it's all right now," the cowpuncher told her cheerfully.
He would not for a thousand dollars have told her how near it had
come to being all wrong, how her life had probably depended upon
that faint wafted call of hers.
He put her on his horse and led it forward to the spot where the
cattle waited at the gateway. Not until they came full upon them
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: Beyond all titles, and a household name,
Hereafter, through all times, Albert the Good.
Break not, O woman's-heart, but still endure;
Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure,
Remembering all the beauty of that star
Which shone so close beside Thee that ye made
One light together, but has past and leaves
The Crown a lonely splendour.
May all love,
His love, unseen but felt, o'ershadow Thee,
The love of all Thy sons encompass Thee,
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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 Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: as, with his cakes in his hand, he crossed her strip of cotton back
of the cabin, and disappeared into the wood.
He had boasted of the things he was going to do with his gun
out there.
"You think they got plenty deer in the wood, La Folle?" he had
inquired, with the calculating air of an experienced hunter.
"Non, non!" the woman laughed. "Don't you look fo' no deer, Cheri.
Dat's too big. But you bring La Folle one good fat squirrel
fo' her dinner to-morrow, an' she goin' be satisfi'."
"One squirrel ain't a bite. I'll bring you mo' 'an one, La
Folle," he had boasted pompously as he went away.
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
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 Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: He had known romance, and the spell of the great, simple, and
primitive emotions; he had sat down to eat with buccaneers; he had
seen the fierce, quick leap of unleashed passions, and had felt
death swoop close at his nape and pass like a swift spurt of cold
air. City life, his old life, had no charm for him now. Wilbur
honestly believed that he was changed to his heart's core. He
thought that, like Moran, he was henceforth to be a sailor of the
sea, a rover, and he saw the rest of his existence passed with
her, aboard their faithful little schooner. They would have the
whole round world as their playground; they held the earth and the
great seas in fief; there was no one to let or to hinder. They
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