| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: proposes himself to write in a similar vein, he will find his
work cut out for him.
Thoreau composed seemingly while he walked, or at least
exercise and composition were with him intimately connected;
for we are told that "the length of his walk uniformly made
the length of his writing." He speaks in one place of
"plainness and vigour, the ornaments of style," which is
rather too paradoxical to be comprehensively, true.
In another he remarks: "As for style of writing, if one has
anything to say it drops from him simply as a stone falls to
the ground." We must conjecture a very large sense indeed
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: all their guns, and stores, and men on board.
As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down
into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any
sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its
depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that
silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing
and wrenching in agony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were
visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three such thin
threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an
eight day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board.
Is this the creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said--"Canst
Moby Dick |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: the gorge it makes two leaps, one of about one hundred and twenty
and the other of three hundred feet. I investigated the upper or
lesser fall, which is close to the hotel.
Up to that time nothing particular happens to the
Yellowstone--its banks being only rocky, rather steep, and
plentifully adorned with pines.
At the falls it comes round a corner, green, solid, ribbed with a
little foam, and not more than thirty yards wide. Then it goes
over, still green, and rather more solid than before. After a
minute or two, you, sitting upon a rock directly above the drop,
begin to understand that something has occurred; that the river
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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 Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: when she sees the treasure, which was contributed by her upon a
necessity for the war, wantonly lavished out by us upon our city, to
gild her all over, and to adorn and set her forth, as it were some vain
woman, hung round with precious stones and figures and temples, which
cost a world of money."
Pericles, on the other hand, informed the people, that they were in no
way obliged to give any account of those moneys to their allies, so long
as they maintained their defense, and kept off the barbarians from
attacking them; while in the meantime they did not so much as supply
one horse or man or ship, but only found money for the service; "which
money," said he, "is not theirs that give it, but theirs that receive
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