| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a
final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window,
carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The
old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering
over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with
laughter.
"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?"
"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy.
"Why, I never see anything like it. What did make
him act so?"
"Deed I don't know, Aunt Polly; cats always act
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: poet with his 'Break, break, break' or his e pasin nekuessi
kataphthimenoisin anassein or his 'longius ex altoque sinum trahit,' can
produce a far finer music than any crude imitations of things or actions in
sound, although a letter or two having this imitative power may be a lesser
element of beauty in such passages. The same subtle sensibility, which
adapts the word to the thing, adapts the sentence or cadence to the general
meaning or spirit of the passage. This is the higher onomatopea which has
banished the cruder sort as unworthy to have a place in great languages and
literatures.
We can see clearly enough that letters or collocations of letters do by
various degrees of strength or weakness, length or shortness, emphasis or
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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 Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: to the figures; but there is something enlivening in a hatred
of so genuine a brand, hot as Corsican revenge, and sneering
like Voltaire.
Pencils, school-keeping, and trade being thus discarded one
after another, Thoreau, with a stroke of strategy, turned the
position. He saw his way to get his board and lodging for
practically nothing; and Admetus never got less work out of
any servant since the world began. It was his ambition to be
an oriental philosopher; but he was always a very Yankee sort
of oriental. Even in the peculiar attitude in which he stood
to money, his system of personal economics, as we may call
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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 Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: Avonlea people were on Premier's side of politics; hence on the
night of the meeting nearly all the men and a goodly proportion
of the women had gone to town thirty miles away. Mrs. Rachel
Lynde had gone too. Mrs. Rachel Lynde was a red-hot politician
and couldn't have believed that the political rally could be
carried through without her, although she was on the opposite
side of politics. So she went to town and took her
husband--Thomas would be useful in looking after the horse--and
Marilla Cuthbert with her. Marilla had a sneaking interest in
politics herself, and as she thought it might be her only chance
to see a real live Premier, she promptly took it, leaving Anne
Anne of Green Gables |
