| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: skin weskit.' As if this were not enough, he presently haled me
from my breakfast in a prodigious flutter, and showed me an honest
and rather venerable citizen passing in the Square.
'That's HIM, sir,' he cried, 'the very moral of him! Well, this
one is better dressed, and p'r'aps a trifler taller; and in the
face he don't favour him noways at all, sir. No, not when I come
to look again, 'e don't seem to favour him noways.'
'Jackass!' said I, and I think the greatest stickler for manners
will admit the epithet to have been justified.
Meanwhile the appearance of my landlady added a great load of
anxiety to what I already suffered. It was plain that she had not
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: Prosper Leclere did not have so much, but he knew better how to
handle it. He never broke his paddle--unless it happened to be a
bad one, and then he generally had another all ready in the canoe.
He was at least four inches shorter than Vaillantcoeur; broad
shoulders, long arms, light hair, gray eyes; not a handsome fellow,
but pleasant-looking and very quiet. What he did was done more than
half with his head.
He was the kind of a man that never needs more than one match to
light a fire.
But Vaillantcoeur--well, if the wood was wet he might use a dozen,
and when the blaze was kindled, as like as not he would throw in the
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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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: home. And when that essentially modern creature, the English or
American girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite inns
as if into a drawing-room at home, the French painter owned himself
defenceless; he submitted or he fled. His French respectability,
quite as precise as ours, though covering different provinces of
life, recoiled aghast before the innovation. But the girls were
painters; there was nothing to be done; and Barbizon, when I last
saw it and for the time at least, was practically ceded to the fair
invader. Paterfamilias, on the other hand, the common tourist, the
holiday shopman, and the cheap young gentleman upon the spree, he
hounded from his villages with every circumstance of contumely.
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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 The Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the warriors who guarded him to leap back even though
their prisoner's arms were securely bound behind him.
With raised spears they encircled him as for a moment
longer he stood listening. Faintly from the distance
came another, an answering cry, and Tarzan of the Apes,
satisfied, turned and quietly pursued his way toward
the hut where he was to be imprisoned.
The afternoon wore on. From the surrounding village the
ape-man heard the bustle of preparation for the feast.
Through the doorway of the hut he saw the women laying the
cooking fires and filling their earthen caldrons with water;
The Jungle Tales of Tarzan |
