| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: the sternest forms of grief that ever the world saw; was such
material the stuff that children's playthings should be made
of! How were they to be purified? How was the blessed sunshine
to be thrown into them?
But Eustace told me that these myths were the most singular
things in the world, and that he was invariably astonished,
whenever he began to relate one, by the readiness with which it
adapted itself to the childish purity of his auditors. The
objectionable characteristics seem to be a parasitical growth,
having no essential connection with the original fable. They
fall away, and are thought of no more, the instant he puts his
Tanglewood Tales |
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 The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: was a horrid calumny. I think it notable that he had always
vaunted himself quite implacable, and was taken at his word; so
that he had the addition among his neighbours of "an ill man to
cross." Here was altogether a young nobleman (not yet twenty-four
in the year '45) who had made a figure in the country beyond his
time of life. The less marvel if there were little heard of the
second son, Mr. Henry (my late Lord Durrisdeer), who was neither
very bad nor yet very able, but an honest, solid sort of lad like
many of his neighbours. Little heard, I say; but indeed it was a
case of little spoken. He was known among the salmon fishers in
the firth, for that was a sport that he assiduously followed; he
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