| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: through the most of North America, through the greater South Sea
Islands, in India, along much of the coast of Africa, and in the
ports of China and Japan, is still to be heard, in its home
country, in half a hundred varying stages of transition. You may
go all over the States, and - setting aside the actual intrusion
and influence of foreigners, negro, French, or Chinese - you shall
scarce meet with so marked a difference of accent as in the forty
miles between Edinburgh and Glasgow, or of dialect as in the
hundred miles between Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Book English has
gone round the world, but at home we still preserve the racy idioms
of our fathers, and every county, in some parts every dale, has its
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: Sergius grew weary. He had learnt all there was to learn and had
attained all there was to attain, there was nothing more to do
and his spiritual drowsiness increased. During this time he
heard of his mother's death and his sister Varvara's marriage,
but both events were matters of indifference to him. His whole
attention and his whole interest were concentrated on his inner
life.
In the fourth year of his priesthood, during which the Bishop had
been particularly kind to him, the starets told him that he ought
not to decline it if he were offered an appointment to higher
duties. Then monastic ambition, the very thing he had found so
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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 Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: ceaselessly active, by associations which were of no help to her and which
did not make her happy, in her determination to forget. Suddenly then she
gave up to remembrance. She would cease trying to get over her love for
Glenn, and think of him and dream about him as much as memory dictated.
This must constitute the only happiness she could have.
The change from strife to surrender was so novel and sweet that for days
she felt renewed. It was augmented by her visits to the hospital in Bedford
Park. Through her bountiful presence Virgil Rust and his comrades had many
dull hours of pain and weariness alleviated and brightened. Interesting
herself in the condition of the seriously disabled soldiers and possibility
of their future took time and work Carley gave willingly and gladly. At
The Call of the Canyon |
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 Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: were calling weights, there was the chink of metal, the rapid
snapping of string, the hurrying to old Mr. Melling for stamps.
And at last the postman came with his sack, laughing and jolly.
Then everything slacked off, and Paul took his dinner-basket
and ran to the station to catch the eight-twenty train. The day
in the factory was just twelve hours long.
His mother sat waiting for him rather anxiously. He had to
walk from Keston, so was not home until about twenty past nine.
And he left the house before seven in the morning. Mrs. Morel
was rather anxious about his health. But she herself had had to put up
with so much that she expected her children to take the same odds.
Sons and Lovers |
