| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: without consulting us. No courtesan was ever more capricious nor more
imperious than conception is to artists; we must grasp it, like
fortune, by the hair when it comes.
Astride upon my thought, like Astolphe on his hippogriff, I was
galloping through worlds, suiting them to my fancy. Presently, as I
looked about me to find some omen for the bold productions my wild
imagination was urging me to undertake, a pretty cry, the cry of a
woman issuing refreshed and joyous from a bath, rose above the murmur
of the rippling fringes as their flux and reflux marked a white line
along the shore. Hearing that note as it gushed from a soul, I fancied
I saw among the rocks the foot of an angel, who with outspread wings
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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 Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: faded garland of verses came to an appealing end, she turned to me
with words of praise.
"Sounded pretty," said the generous listener. "Yes, I thought
she did very well. We went to school together, an' Mary Anna had
a very hard time; trouble was, her mother thought she'd given birth
to a genius, an' Mary Anna's come to believe it herself. There, I
don't know what we should have done without her; there ain't nobody
else that can write poetry between here and 'way up towards
Rockland; it adds a great deal at such a time. When she speaks o'
those that are gone, she feels it all, and so does everybody else,
but she harps too much. I'd laid half of that away for next time,
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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 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing
beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank
were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their
arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A
strange roseate light shone through the spaces among their
trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of
AEolian harps. He had not wish to perfect his escape -- he
was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
A whiz and a rattle of grapeshot among the branches high
above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled
cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
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 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such professors of
the several branches of jocularity would have been sternly
repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the
general sentiment which give law its vitality. Not the less,
however, the great, honest face of the people smiled -- grimly,
perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, such as the
colonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the country
fairs and on the village-greens of England; and which it was
thought well to keep alive on this new soil, for the sake of the
courage and manliness that were essential in them. Wrestling
matches, in the different fashions of Cornwall and Devonshire,
The Scarlet Letter |
