| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: clustered on the shores; and oh! the vast mountainous country behind those
houses--the ravines, the passes, the dangerous creeks and fearful tracks
that led to the water's edge. Underneath waved the sea-forest--pink
thread-like trees, velvet anemones, and orange berry-spotted weeds. Now a
stone on the bottom moved, rocked, and there was a glimpse of a black
feeler; now a thread-like creature wavered by and was lost. Something was
happening to the pink, waving trees; they were changing to a cold moonlight
blue. And now there sounded the faintest "plop." Who made that sound?
What was going on down there? And how strong, how damp the seaweed smelt
in the hot sun...
The green blinds were drawn in the bungalows of the summer colony. Over
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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 Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: court loneliness? Carley wrenched her gaze from the desert void to look at
her companions. Stanton's eyes were narrowed; his expression had changed;
lean and hard and still, his face resembled bronze. The careless humor was
gone, as was the heated flush of his quarrel with Flo. The girl, too, had
subtly changed, had responded to an influence that had subdued and softened
her. She was mute; her eyes held a light, comprehensive and all-embracing;
she was beautiful then. For Carley, quick to read emotion, caught a glimpse
of a strong, steadfast soul that spiritualized the brown freckled face.
Carley wheeled to gaze out and down into this incomprehensible abyss, and
on to the far up-flung heights, white and red and yellow, and so on to the
wonderful mystic haze of distance. The significance of Flo's designation of
The Call of the Canyon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: monkish elements were presented in a curious confusion, which
the youth might disentangle for himself. If he had an
opportunity, on the one hand, of acquiring much hair-drawn
divinity and a taste for formal disputation, he was put in
the way of much gross and flaunting vice upon the other. The
lecture room of a scholastic doctor was sometimes under the
same roof with establishments of a very different and
peculiarly unedifying order. The students had extraordinary
privileges, which by all accounts they abused
extraordinarily. And while some condemned themselves to an
almost sepulchral regularity and seclusion, others fled the
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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 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: carefully and with such labour prepared--so assiduously sown with
the seeds of good intentions, of self-denying plans. And now it is
deluged with a nectarous flood--the young germs swamped--delicious
poison cankering them: now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in
the drawing-room at Vale Hall at my bride Rosamond Oliver's feet:
she is talking to me with her sweet voice--gazing down on me with
those eyes your skilful hand has copied so well--smiling at me with
these coral lips. She is mine--I am hers--this present life and
passing world suffice to me. Hush! say nothing--my heart is full of
delight--my senses are entranced--let the time I marked pass in
peace."
Jane Eyre |
