| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: was the matter.
`It makes me homesick, Jimmy, this flower, this smell,' she said softly.
`We have this flower very much at home, in the old country.
It always grew in our yard and my papa had a green bench and a
table under the bushes. In summer, when they were in bloom,
he used to sit there with his friend that played the trombone.
When I was little I used to go down there to hear them talk--
beautiful talk, like what I never hear in this country.'
`What did they talk about?' I asked her.
She sighed and shook her head. `Oh, I don't know! About music,
and the woods, and about God, and when they were young.'
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: their rifles. They then stripped them naked, and drove them off,
refusing the entreaties of Mr. Crooks for a flint and steel of
which they had robbed him; and threatening his life if he did not
instantly depart
In this forlorn plight, still worse off than before, they renewed
their wanderings. They now sought to find their way back to the
hospitable Wallah-Wallahs, and had advanced eighty miles along
the river, when fortunately, on the very morning that they were
going to leave the Columbia and strike inland, the canoes of Mr.
Stuart hove in sight.
It is needless to describe the joy of these poor men at once more
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: press him on this, being most upset at this information which was
news to us) that necessitated your riding about alone, or attended
by a ruffian who, Captain Butler assures us, is a murderer. We
could see how this wrung his heart and think he must be a most
indulgent--in fact, a far too indulgent husband. Scarlett, this
must stop. Your mother is not here to command you and I must do it
in her place. Think how your little children will feel when they
grow older and realize that you were in trade! How mortified they
will be to know that you exposed yourself to the insults of rude
men and the dangers of careless gossip in attending to mills. Such
unwomanly--"
Gone With the Wind |
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 Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: had established that ethical fact on an unshakable foundation.
They had established, erected, consecrated it behind Mr Verloc's
back, for reasons that had nothing to do with abstract morality.
And Mr Verloc was not aware of it. It is but bare justice to him
to say that he had no notion of appearing good to Stevie. Yet so
it was. He was even the only man so qualified in Stevie's
knowledge, because the gentlemen lodgers had been too transient and
too remote to have anything very distinct about them but perhaps
their boots; and as regards the disciplinary measures of his
father, the desolation of his mother and sister shrank from setting
up a theory of goodness before the victim. It would have been too
The Secret Agent |
