| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: teaching. Realism I regard as a mere question of method. The
'brown foreground,' 'old mastery,' and the like, ranking with
villanelles, as technical sports and pastimes. Real art, whether
ideal or realistic, addresses precisely the same feeling, and seeks
the same qualities - significance or charm. And the same - very
same - inspiration is only methodically differentiated according as
the artist is an arrant realist or an arrant idealist. Each, by
his own method, seeks to save and perpetuate the same significance
or charm; the one by suppressing, the other by forcing, detail.
All other idealism is the brown foreground over again, and hence
only art in the sense of a game, like cup and ball. All other
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: many things in reproach of the Thebans and Olynthians, and at
the Olympic Games recited it publicly, how was it, that he,
rising up, and recounting historically and demonstratively what
benefits and advantages all Greece had received from the Thebans
and Chalcidians, and on the contrary, what mischiefs the
flatterers of the Macedonians had brought upon it, so turned the
minds of all that were present that the sophist, in alarm at the
outcry against him, secretly made his way out of the assembly?
But Demosthenes, it should seem, regarded other points in the
character of Pericles to be unsuited to him; but his reserve and
his sustained manner, and his forbearing to speak on the sudden,
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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 Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum: wilderness in all Oz. Even the Cowardly Lion had to
admit that certain parts of this forest were unknown to
him, although he had often wandered among the trees,
and the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, who were great
travelers, never had been there at all.
The forest was only reached after a tedious tramp,
for some of the Rescue Expedition were quite awkward on
their feet. The Patchwork Girl was as light as a
feather and very spry; the Tin Woodman covered the
ground as easily as Uncle Henry and the Wizard; but
Tik-Tok moved slowly and the slightest obstruction in
Glinda of Oz |
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 St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: the wet path and kissed it twice. At the second it was withdrawn
suddenly, methought with more of a start than she had hitherto
displayed. I regained my former attitude, and we were both silent
awhile. My timidity returned on me tenfold. I looked in her face
for any signals of anger, and seeing her eyes to waver and fall
aside from mine, augured that all was well.
'You must have been mad to come here!' she broke out. 'Of all
places under heaven this is no place for you to come. And I was
just thinking you were safe in France!'
'You were thinking of me!' I cried.
'Mr. St. Ives, you cannot understand your danger,' she replied. 'I
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