| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: which made a cross in my forehead very plainly to be seen now.
The gash bled very freely, and I roared very loudly and betook
myself home. The coldhearted Aunt Katy paid no attention either
to my wound or my roaring, except to tell me it served me right;
I had no business with Ike; it was good for me; I would now keep
away _"from dem Lloyd niggers."_ Miss Lucretia, in this state of
the case, came forward; and, in quite a different spirit from
that manifested by Aunt Katy, she called me into the parlor (an
extra privilege of itself) and, without using toward me any of
the hard-hearted and reproachful epithets of my kitchen
tormentor, she quietly acted the good Samaritan. With her own
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Bronte Sisters: than receive.'
'Oh! that's all nonsense, my dear. It's mere boy's talk that!
You'll soon tire of petting and humouring your wife, be she ever so
charming, and then comes the trial.'
'Well, then, we must bear one another's burdens.'
'Then you must fall each into your proper place. You'll do your
business, and she, if she's worthy of you, will do hers; but it's
your business to please yourself, and hers to please you. I'm sure
your poor, dear father was as good a husband as ever lived, and
after the first six months or so were over, I should as soon have
expected him to fly, as to put himself out of his way to pleasure
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: I, "you shall on shore and kill him." Xury, looked frighted, and
said, "Me kill! he eat me at one mouth!" - one mouthful he meant.
However, I said no more to the boy, but bade him lie still, and I
took our biggest gun, which was almost musket-bore, and loaded it
with a good charge of powder, and with two slugs, and laid it down;
then I loaded another gun with two bullets; and the third (for we
had three pieces) I loaded with five smaller bullets. I took the
best aim I could with the first piece to have shot him in the head,
but he lay so with his leg raised a little above his nose, that the
slugs hit his leg about the knee and broke the bone. He started
up, growling at first, but finding his leg broken, fell down again;
Robinson Crusoe |
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 Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: don't believe in, and don't like, and which can never make
aught but a silly yarn? Make another end to it? Ah, yes,
but that's not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I
never use an effect, when I can help it, unless it prepares
the effects that are to follow; that's what a story consists
in. To make another end, that is to make the beginning all
wrong. The denouement of a long story is nothing; it is just
a 'full close,' which you may approach and accompany as you
please - it is a coda, not an essential member in the rhythm;
but the body and end of a short story is bone of the bone and
blood of the blood of the beginning. Well, I shall end by
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