| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: first experiment out in the middle of this big river was not made
without some trepidation. What would happen when the wind first
caught my little canvas? I suppose it was almost as trying a
venture into the regions of the unknown as to publish a first book,
or to marry. But my doubts were not of long duration; and in five
minutes you will not be surprised to learn that I had tied my
sheet.
I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of course,
in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the
sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a
canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: mindedly, he threw it to the bottom of the canyon. Then
he stared pensively into the abyss, watching the arch of
its flight.
"Look at that stone; how it keeps on going. . . ."
VII
It was a heavenly morning. It had rained all night,
the sky awakened covered with white clouds. Young wild
colts trotted on the summit of the sierra, with tense
manes and waving hair, proud as the peaks lifting their
heads to the clouds.
The soldiers stepped among the huge rocks, buoyed
The Underdogs |
