| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: belfry and the truck on the railway: I could not stand it and
rushed away.
At home I found a visitor, an old friend, who, after greeting me,
began to complain that as he wa s driving to me he had lost his
way in the forest, and a splendid valuable dog of his had dropped
behind.
THE BET
IT WAS a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and
down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had
given a party one autumn evening. There had been many clever men
there, and there had been interesting conversations. Among other
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: could advance in the profession. Little by little his prudence and the
ability with which he initiated his pupils into his art, the certainty
each mother felt that her daughter was in company with none but well-
bred young girls, and the fact of the artist's marriage, gave him an
excellent reputation as a teacher in society. When a young girl wished
to learn to draw, and her mother asked advice of her friends, the
answer was, invariably: "Send her to Servin's."
Servin became, therefore, for feminine art, a specialty; like Herbault
for bonnets, Leroy for gowns, and Chevet for eatables. It was
recognized that a young woman who had taken lessons from Servin was
capable of judging the paintings of the Musee conclusively, of making
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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 A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: assurance, and I don't even know now what were the books then
lying about the room. What ever they were, they were not the
works of great masters, where the secret of clear thought and
exact expression can be found. Since the age of five I have been
a great reader, as is not perhaps wonderful in a child who was
never aware of learning to read. At ten years of age I had read
much of Victor Hugo and other romantics. I had read in Polish
and in French, history, voyages, novels; I knew "Gil Blas" and
"Don Quixote" in abridged editions; I had read in early boyhood
Polish poets and some French poets, but I cannot say what I read
on the evening before I began to write myself. I believe it was
A Personal Record |
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 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: Fleeming throughout life. His thoroughness was not that of the
patient scholar, but of an untrained woman with fits of passionate
study; he had learned too much from dogma, given indeed by
cherished lips; and precocious as he was in the use of the tools of
the mind, he was truly backward in knowledge of life and of
himself. Such as it was at least, his home and school training was
now complete; and you are to conceive the lad as being formed in a
household of meagre revenue, among foreign surroundings, and under
the influence of an imperious drawing-room queen; from whom he
learned a great refinement of morals, a strong sense of duty, much
forwardness of bearing, all manner of studious and artistic
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