| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" followed;
also "The Assyrian Came Down," and other declama-
tory gems. Then there were reading exercises, and a
spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with
honor. The prime feature of the evening was in order,
now -- original "compositions" by the young ladies.
Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of the
platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript
(tied with dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with
labored attention to "expression" and punctuation.
The themes were the same that had been illuminated
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: rather moody and absorbed, so that she had of late
never found an opportunity for the cozy chats that had
formerly meant so much to them both. There had been
too, recently, a strange lack of consideration for
herself that had wounded her more than she had
imagined. Today there had been a glaring example of it
in his having left her alone upon the boat without a
single European companion--something that he would
never have thought of doing a few months before.
As she sat speculating on the strange change which had
come over her father her eyes had wandered aimlessly
The Monster Men |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
Anabasis |
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: top of the first brae the ground was all virgin, the world all shut
out, the face of things unchanged by any of man's doings. Here was
no living presence, save for the limpets on the rocks, for some
old, gray, rain-beaten ram that I might rouse out of a ferny den
betwixt two boulders, or for the haunting and the piping of the
gulls. It was older than man; it was found so by incoming Celts,
and seafaring Norsemen, and Columba's priests. The earthy savour
of the bog-plants, the rude disorder of the boulders, the
inimitable seaside brightness of the air, the brine and the iodine,
the lap of the billows among the weedy reefs, the sudden springing
up of a great run of dashing surf along the sea-front of the isle,
|
