| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: yellow, and a shirt or blue-and-white striped cotton. It was
conspicuous, it was cheap, it pointed us out to laughter - we, who
were old soldiers, used to arms, and some of us showing noble
scars, - like a set of lugubrious zanies at a fair. The old name
of that rock on which our prison stood was (I have heard since
then) the PAINTED HILL. Well, now it was all painted a bright
yellow with our costumes; and the dress of the soldiers who guarded
us being of course the essential British red rag, we made up
together the elements of a lively picture of hell. I have again
and again looked round upon my fellow-prisoners, and felt my anger
rise, and choked upon tears, to behold them thus parodied. The
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: collar was missing. His wife told him that the dog had lost it
in the undergrowth of the park, and that she and her maids had
hunted a whole day for it. It was true, she explained to the
court, that she had made the maids search for the necklet--they
all believed the dog had lost it in the park. . .
Her husband made no comment, and that evening at supper he was in
his usual mood, between good and bad: you could never tell which.
He talked a good deal, describing what he had seen and done at
Rennes; but now and then he stopped and looked hard at her; and
when she went to bed she found her little dog strangled on her
pillow. The little thing was dead, but still warm; she stooped
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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 Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: her since she had saved my life, I owed her nothing. She
was a half-naked little savage--I, a gentleman, and an
officer in the world's greatest navy. There could be no
close bonds of interest between us.
This line of reflection I discovered to be as distressing as
the former, but, though I tried to turn my mind to other
things, it persisted in returning to the vision of an oval
face, sun-tanned; of smiling lips, revealing white and even
teeth; of brave eyes that harbored no shadow of guile; and
of a tumbling mass of wavy hair that crowned the loveliest
picture on which my eyes had ever rested.
Lost Continent |
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 Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: couple of bars of a weird and mournful tune, she
would drop whatever she had in her hand--she
would leave Mrs. Smith in the middle of a sentence
--and she would run out to his call. Mrs. Smith
called her a shameless hussy. She answered noth-
ing. She said nothing at all to anybody, and went
on her way as if she had been deaf. She and I alone
all in the land, I fancy, could see his very real
beauty. He was very good-looking, and most
graceful in his bearing, with that something wild
as of a woodland creature in his aspect. Her moth-
Amy Foster |
