| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: The road was creeping drowsily now between high grass-banks, out
through the hills. A sleepy, quiet road. The restless dust of
the town never had been heard of out there. It went wandering
lazily through the corn-fields, down by the river, into the very
depths of the woods,--the low October sunshine slanting warmly
down it all the way, touching the grass-banks and the corn-fields
with patches of russet gold. Nobody in such a road could be in a
hurry. The quiet was so deep, the free air, the heavy trees, the
sunshine, all so full and certain and fixed, one could be sure of
finding them the same a hundred years from now. Nobody ever was
in a hurry. The brown bees came along there, when their work was
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: with mother-o'-pearl buttons. Girls whose minds were bounded on
the north by the nickel theatres; on the east by "I sez to him"; on
the south by the gorgeous shop windows; and on the west by "He sez
t' me."
Oh, I can't tell you how much Louie learned in that first week
while his eyes were getting accustomed to the shifting, jostling,
pushing, giggling, walking, talking throng. The city is justly
famed as a hot house of forced knowledge.
One thing Louie could not learn. He could not bring himself
to accept the V in Sophy's dress. Louie's mother had been one of
the old-fashioned kind who wore a blue-and-white checked gingham
Buttered Side Down |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: was white, and she wore a white gown that hung in pleats from her
shoulders. Over it were sprinkled little stars that glistened in
the sun like diamonds. The men were dressed in blue, of the same
shade as their hats, and wore well-polished boots with a deep roll
of blue at the tops. The men, Dorothy thought, were about as old
as Uncle Henry, for two of them had beards. But the little woman
was doubtless much older. Her face was covered with wrinkles, her
hair was nearly white, and she walked rather stiffly.
When these people drew near the house where Dorothy was
standing in the doorway, they paused and whispered among themselves,
as if afraid to come farther. But the little old woman walked up
The Wizard 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 The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: formed a style, adhere to it through life. But those of a
higher order cannot rest content with a process which, as
they continue to employ it, must infallibly degenerate
towards the academic and the cut-and-dried. Every fresh work
in which they embark is the signal for a fresh engagement of
the whole forces of their mind; and the changing views which
accompany the growth of their experience are marked by still
more sweeping alterations in the manner of their art. So
that criticism loves to dwell upon and distinguish the
varying periods of a Raphael, a Shakespeare, or a Beethoven.
It is, then, first of all, at this initial and decisive
|
