| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: is the frail rough sketch of what the home will afterwards become.
Successive layers will be added to it; and the partition-wall will
grow into a thick blanket capable of partly retaining, by its own
weight, the requisite curve and capacity. The Spider now abandons
the stalactites of sand, which were used to keep the original
pocket stretched, and confines herself to dumping down on her abode
any more or less heavy object, mainly corpses of insects, because
she need not look for these and finds them ready to hand after each
meal. They are weights, not trophies; they take the place of
materials that must otherwise be collected from a distance and
hoisted to the top. In this way, a breastwork is obtained that
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: herself.
Madame Valmonde bent her portly figure over Desiree and kissed
her, holding her an instant tenderly in her arms. Then she turned
to the child.
"This is not the baby!" she exclaimed, in startled tones.
French was the language spoken at Valmonde in those days.
"I knew you would be astonished," laughed Desiree, "at the way
he has grown. The little cochon de lait! Look at his legs,
mamma, and his hands and fingernails,--real finger-nails. Zandrine
had to cut them this morning. Isn't it true, Zandrine?"
The woman bowed her turbaned head majestically, "Mais si, Madame."
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: followed; and in two minutes they reached the banks of the stream,
and stopped fifty paces from the pyre, upon which still lay the rajah's corpse.
In the semi-obscurity they saw the victim, quite senseless, stretched out
beside her husband's body. Then a torch was brought, and the wood,
heavily soaked with oil, instantly took fire.
At this moment Sir Francis and the guide seized Phileas Fogg, who,
in an instant of mad generosity, was about to rush upon the pyre.
But he had quickly pushed them aside, when the whole scene suddenly changed.
A cry of terror arose. The whole multitude prostrated themselves,
terror-stricken, on the ground.
The old rajah was not dead, then, since he rose of a sudden,
Around the World in 80 Days |
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 Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: the finished picture and its worth when done; I, of the brushes,
the palette, and the north light. He uttered his views in the tone
and for the ear of good society; I, with the emphasis and
technicalities of the obtrusive student. But the point, I may
reply, is not merely to amuse the public, but to offer helpful
advice to the young writer. And the young writer will not so much
be helped by genial pictures of what an art may aspire to at its
highest, as by a true idea of what it must be on the lowest terms.
The best that we can say to him is this: Let him choose a motive,
whether of character or passion; carefully construct his plot so
that every incident is an illustration of the motive, and every
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