| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: personal friends, I do assure you, Mr Varden.'
'Sir John,' returned the locksmith, gravely, 'I will tell you, as
nearly as I can, in the words he used to me, what he desires that
you should know, and what you ought to know without a moment's loss
of time.'
Sir John Chester settled himself in a position of greater repose,
and looked at his visitor with an expression of face which seemed
to say, 'This is an amusing fellow! I'll hear him out.'
'You may have seen in the newspapers, sir,' said Gabriel, pointing
to the one which lay by his side, 'that I was a witness against
this man upon his trial some days since; and that it was not his
Barnaby Rudge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: for the French, and there is a white trader there in a house with a
verandah, and a catechist. Oh, that is a fine place indeed! The
trader has barrels filled with flour, and a French warship once
came in the lagoon and gave everybody wine and biscuit. Ah, my
poor Keola, I wish I could take you there, for great is my love to
you, and it is the finest place in the seas except Papeete."
So now Keola was the most terrified man in the four oceans. He had
heard tell of eaters of men in the south islands, and the thing had
always been a fear to him; and here it was knocking at his door.
He had heard besides, by travellers, of their practices, and how
when they are in a mind to eat a man, they cherish and fondle him
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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 The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: greatest gain to sense and vigour. Even the derangement of
the phrases from their (so-called) natural order is luminous
for the mind; and it is by the means of such designed
reversal that the elements of a judgment may be most
pertinently marshalled, or the stages of a complicated action
most perspicuously bound into one.
The web, then, or the pattern: a web at once sensuous and
logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style,
that is the foundation of the art of literature. Books
indeed continue to be read, for the interest of the fact or
fable, in which this quality is poorly represented, but still
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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 One Basket by Edna Ferber: Blanche Devine hesitated a moment, her floury hand on her hip.
Then she went to the pantry shelf and took out a clean white
saucer. She selected from the brown jar on the table three of
the brownest, crumbliest, most perfect cookies, with a walnut
meat perched atop of each, placed them temptingly on the saucer
and, descending the steps, came swiftly across the grass to the
triumphant Snooky. Blanche Devine held out the saucer, her lips
smiling, her eyes tender. Snooky reached up with one plump white
arm.
"Snooky!" shrilled a high voice. "Snooky!" A voice of
horror and of wrath. "Come here to me this minute! And don't
One Basket |
