| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: "Oh Harry!" cried Betty, in real distress.
"I know," he answered; "but as Miss Bartram is going to stay two
weeks, she'll keep. She's not like a drove, that's here one day,
and away the next. Besides, it is precious little good I shall
have of her society, until you two have used up all your secrets
and small talk. I know how it is with girls. Leonard will drive
over to meet the train."
"Won't I do on a pinch?" Leonard asked.
"Oh, to be sure," said Betty, a little embarrassed, "only Alice--
Miss Bartram--might expect Harry, because her brother came for me
when I went up."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: arts. Painting, ruefully comparing sunshine and flake-white, gives
up truth of colour, as it had already given up relief and movement;
and instead of vying with nature, arranges a scheme of harmonious
tints. Literature, above all in its most typical mood, the mood of
narrative, similarly flees the direct challenge and pursues instead
an independent and creative aim. So far as it imitates at all, it
imitates not life but speech: not the facts of human destiny, but
the emphasis and the suppressions with which the human actor tells
of them. The real art that dealt with life directly was that of
the first men who told their stories round the savage camp-fire.
Our art is occupied, and bound to be occupied, not so much in
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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 The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: smiled and her smile made me terribly afraid. The thought that this
thing which is happening to me, this thing that I took to be a crime,
may be only a necessity - the thought fills me with horror! Am I in
a prison? or is this the cell of an insane asylum? Am I the victim
of a villain? or am I really mad? My pulse is quickening, but my
memory is quite clear; I can look back over every incident in my life.
"She has just taken away my food. I asked her to bring me only eggs
as I was afraid of everything else. She promised that she would do it.
"Are they looking for me? My guardian is Theodore Fellner, Cathedral
Lane, 14. My own name is Asta Langen.
"They took away my travelling bag, but they did not find this little
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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 Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: Who thought the spirit with its body died."[39]
[39] "Suo cimitero da questa parte hanno
Con Epieuro tutti i suoi seguaci,
Che l'anima col corpo morta fanno."
Inferno, X. 13-15.
And here my eyes, reverting to the end of Canto IX.,
fall upon a similar contrast between Mr. Longfellow's lines,--
"For flames between the sepulchres were scattered,
By which they so intensely heated were,
That iron more so asks not any art,"--
and those of Dr. Parsons,--
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
