| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: been so liberally ladling out praise to my unseen collaborators, if
I here toss them over, bound hand and foot, into the arena of the
critics? For the business of the powders, which so many have
censured, is, I am relieved to say, not mine at all but the
Brownies'. Of another tale, in case the reader should have glanced
at it, I may say a word: the not very defensible story of OLALLA.
Here the court, the mother, the mother's niche, Olalla, Olalla's
chamber, the meetings on the stair, the broken window, the ugly
scene of the bite, were all given me in bulk and detail as I have
tried to write them; to this I added only the external scenery (for
in my dream I never was beyond the court), the portrait, the
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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 Contrast by Royall Tyler: men may have ill-luck; but to game it away, as Trans-
fer says--why, at this rate, his whole estate may go in
one night, and, what is ten times worse, mine into the
bargain. No, no; Mary is right. Leave women to
look out in these matters; for all they look as if they
didn't know a journal from a ledger, when their inter-
est is concerned they know what's what; they mind
the main chance as well as the best of us. I wonder
Mary did not tell me she knew of his spending his
money so foolishly. Seventeen thousand pounds!
Why, if my daughter was standing up to be married,
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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 Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: "Seems to be a sort of haze over her," observed Wilbur.
"I noticed that, air kinda quivers oily-like. No boats, no boats--
an' I can't see anybody aboard." Suddenly Kitchell lowered the
glass and turned to Wilbur. He was a different man. There was a
new shine in his eyes, a wicked line appeared over the nose, the
jaw grew salient, prognathous.
"Son," he exclaimed, gimleting Wilbur with his contracted eves; "I
have reemarked as how you had brains. I kin fool the coolies, but
I can't fool you. It looks to me as if that bark yonder was a
derelict; an' do you know what that means to us? Chaw on it a
turn."
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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 The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: rank, was to him agony and breaking on the wheel. He regarded
the laugh of the common people whom he passed on the street, and
the suppressed titter, or yet more offensive terror, of the young
girls to whom he was introduced in company, as proofs of the true
sense which the world entertained of him, as a prodigy unfit to
be received among them on the usual terms of society, and as
vindicating the wisdom of his purpose in withdrawing himself from
among them. On the faith and sincerity of two persons alone, he
seemed to rely implicitly--on that of his betrothed bride, and of
a friend eminently gifted in personal accomplishments, who
seemed, and indeed probably was, sincerely attached to him. He
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