| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Rahero set him to row, never a word he spoke,
And the boat sang in the water urged by his vigorous stroke.
- "What ails you?" the woman asked, "and why did you drop the brand?
We have only to kindle another as soon as we come to land."
Never a word Rahero replied, but urged the canoe.
And a chill fell on the woman. - "Atta! speak! is it you?
Speak! Why are you silent? Why do you bend aside?
Wherefore steer to the seaward?" thus she panted and cried.
Never a word from the oarsman, toiling there in the dark;
But right for a gate of the reef he silently headed the bark,
And wielding the single paddle with passionate sweep on sweep,
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: broke over the red wall as he gained the trail beyond the spring.
He skirted the curve of the valley and led Bolly a little way up the
wooded slope to a dense thicket of aspens in a hollow. This thicket
encircled a patch of grass. Hare pressed the lithe aspens aside to admit
Bolly and left her there free. He drew his rifle from its sheath and,
after assuring himself that the mustang could not be seen or heard from
below, he bent his steps diagonally up the slope.
Every foot of this ground he knew, and he climbed swiftly until he struck
the mountain trail. Then, descending, he entered the cedars. At last he
reached a point directly above the cliff-camp where he had spent so many
days, and this he knew overhung the cabin built by Holderness. He stole
The Heritage of the Desert |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: equally impatient of the short cut-and-thrust method of Socrates, whom he
endeavours to draw into a long oration. At last, he gets tired of being
defeated at every point by Socrates, and is with difficulty induced to
proceed (compare Thrasymachus, Protagoras, Callicles, and others, to whom
the same reluctance is ascribed).
Hippias like Protagoras has common sense on his side, when he argues,
citing passages of the Iliad in support of his view, that Homer intended
Achilles to be the bravest, Odysseus the wisest of the Greeks. But he is
easily overthrown by the superior dialectics of Socrates, who pretends to
show that Achilles is not true to his word, and that no similar
inconsistency is to be found in Odysseus. Hippias replies that Achilles
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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 Gambara by Honore de Balzac: been swallowed up made him feel sick. He drew back a step to study the
neighborhood, and finding an ill-looking man at his elbow, he asked
him for information. The man, who held a knotted stick in his right
hand, placed the left on his hip and replied in a single word:
"Scoundrel!"
But on looking at the Italian, who stood in the light of a street-
lamp, he assumed a servile expression.
"I beg your pardon, sir," said he, suddenly changing his tone. "There
is a restaurant near this, a sort of table-d'hote, where the cooking
is pretty bad and they serve cheese in the soup. Monsieur is in search
of the place, perhaps, for it is easy to see that he is an Italian--
Gambara |
