| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: they arrived."
"I'd have ordered salads and green things," Hutchinson criticized
hungrily, "with a big, rare, Porterhouse, and young onions and
radishes,--the kind your teeth sink into with a crunch."
"I'd have followed the eggs with them, I guess, if I hadn't
awakened," Pentfield replied.
He picked up a trail-scarred banjo from the floor and began to
strum a few wandering notes. Hutchinson winced and breathed
heavily.
"Quit it!" he burst out with sudden fury, as the other struck into
a gaily lifting swing. "It drives me mad. I can't stand it"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: game! White stands well enough, so far as you can see; but Red
says, Mate in six moves; - White looks, - nods; - the game is over.
Just so in talking with first-rate men; especially when they are
good-natured and expansive, as they are apt to be at table. That
blessed clairvoyance which sees into things without opening them, -
that glorious license, which, having shut the door and driven the
reporter from its key-hole, calls upon Truth, majestic virgin! to
get off from her pedestal and drop her academic poses, and take a
festive garland and the vacant place on the MEDIUS LECTUS, - that
carnival-shower of questions and replies and comments, large axioms
bowled over the mahogany like bomb-shells from professional
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: choice, and, with scientific thoroughness, steadily to
communicate matter which is not worth learning. The danger
of the idealist is, of course, to become merely null and lose
all grip of fact, particularity, or passion.
We talk of bad and good. Everything, indeed, is good which
is conceived with honesty and executed with communicative
ardour. But though on neither side is dogmatism fitting, and
though in every case the artist must decide for himself, and
decide afresh and yet afresh for each succeeding work and new
creation; yet one thing may be generally said, that we of the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, breathing as we do
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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: among whom Anne felt suddenly shy and frightened and countrified.
Her dress, which, in the east gable, had seemed so dainty and
pretty, now seemed simple and plain--too simple and plain, she
thought, among all the silks and laces that glistened and rustled
around her. What were her pearl beads compared to the diamonds
of the big, handsome lady near her? And how poor her one wee white
rose must look beside all the hothouse flowers the others wore!
Anne laid her hat and jacket away, and shrank miserably into a corner.
She wished herself back in the white room at Green Gables.
It was still worse on the platform of the big concert hall of the
hotel, where she presently found herself. The electric lights
Anne of Green Gables |
