| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: from the peasantry. The measure of their sense is this: that these
symposia of rustic vanity were kept entirely within the family, like
some secret ancestral practice. To the world their serious faces were
never deformed by the suspicion of any simper of self-contentment. Yet
it was known. "They hae a guid pride o' themsel's!" was the word in the
country-side.
Lastly, in a Border story, there should be added their "two-names." Hob
was The Laird. "Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne"; he was the laird of
Cauldstaneslap - say fifty acres - IPSISSIMUS. Clement was Mr. Elliott,
as upon his door-plate, the earlier Dafty having been discarded as no
longer applicable, and indeed only a reminder of misjudgment and the
|
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 Lone Star Ranger by Zane Grey: killing. Duane divined that no sudden animosity was driving
Bosomer. It was just his chance. In that moment murder would
have been joy to him. Very likely he had forgotten his pretext
for a quarrel. Very probably his faculties were absorbed in
conjecture as to Duane's possibilities.
But he did not speak a word. He remained motionless for a long
moment, his eyes pale and steady, his right hand like a claw.
That instant gave Duane a power to read in his enemy's eyes the
thought that preceded action. But Duane did not want to kill
another man. Still he would have to fight, and he decided to
cripple Bosomer. When Bosomer's hand moved Duane's gun was
The Lone Star Ranger |
