| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: liver may at times rebel; and because you have come so far from
metropolitan advantages, it does not follow that you shall recover.
But one thing is undeniable - that in the rare air, clear, cold, and
blinding light of Alpine winters, a man takes a certain troubled
delight in his existence which can nowhere else be paralleled. He is
perhaps no happier, but he is stingingly alive. It does not,
perhaps, come out of him in work or exercise, yet he feels an
enthusiasm of the blood unknown in more temperate climates. It may
not be health, but it is fun.
There is nothing more difficult to communicate on paper than this
baseless ardour, this stimulation of the brain, this sterile
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: of the expectant audience."
The humorous poem was admirably recited, and the speaker much applauded. Among
the audience was the young man of the hospital, who seemed to have forgotten
his adventure of the preceding night. He had on the Shoes; for as yet no
lawful owner had appeared to claim them; and besides it was so very dirty
out-of-doors, they were just the thing for him, he thought.
The beginning of the poem he praised with great generosity: he even found the
idea original and effective. But that the end of it, like the Rhine, was very
insignificant, proved, in his opinion, the author's want of invention; he was
without genius, etc. This was an excellent opportunity to have said something
clever.
Fairy Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their
legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and
settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice
and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our
common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably
interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been
deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore,
acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them,
as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America,
United States Declaration of Independence |
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 Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: scene and under the new name, he suffered no less sharply than
before. A place was got, it was lost in the old style; from the
long-suffering of the keepers of restaurants he fell to more open
charity upon the wayside; as time went on, good nature became
weary, and after a repulse or two, Herrick became shy. There
were women enough who would have supported a far worse
and a far uglier man; Herrick never met or never knew them: or
if he did both, some manlier feeling would revolt, and he
preferred starvation. Drenched with rains, broiling by day,
shivering by night, a disused and ruinous prison for a bedroom,
his diet begged or pilfered out of rubbish heaps, his associates
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