| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: (in his golden carriage and on horseback), swimming (in his pool
full of pearls), and even knitting. In all he tried thousands or
perhaps hundreds of activities, each of them dozens of times.
He also held athletic contests, built amusement parks, and ransacked
the world for jugglers and magicians and singers and players and
storytellers (that's how I met him) and musicians. He ate too much,
drank too much, and danced and played and watched and traveled and
did too much and basically engaged in a constant frenzy of activity
from morning to night, from January to December, from the beginning
of the decade to its end. And the result was that he was amused for
awhile, but was mostly fat and tired and sometimes drunk and often
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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 Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: vultures, the vast untrammeled forests and plains their covert. Ten years of
war had rendered this wilderness a place where those few white men who had
survived were hardened to the spilling of blood, stern even in those few quiet
hours which peril allowed them, strong in their sacrifice of all for future
generations.
A low growl from Mose broke into Joe's reflections. The dog had raised his
nose from his paws and sniffed suspiciously at the air. The lad heard a slight
rustling outside, and in another moment was overjoyed at seeing Whispering
Winds. She came swiftly, with a lithe, graceful motion, and flying to him like
a rush of wind, knelt beside him. She kissed him and murmured words of
endearment.
The Spirit of the Border |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: name is to be Eustacia Clementine." And the girl retired.
"What a mockery!" said Clym. "This unhappy marriage
of mine to be perpetuated in that child's name!"
4 - The Ministrations of a Half-forgotten One
Eustacia's journey was at first as vague in direction as that
of thistledown on the wind. She did not know what to do.
She wished it had been night instead of morning, that she
might at least have borne her misery without the possibility
of being seen. Tracing mile after mile along between
the dying ferns and the wet white spiders' webs, she at
length turned her steps towards her grandfather's house.
Return of the Native |
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 Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: once too often to make a play out of the cheap pessimism which is
thrown into despair by a comparison of actual human nature with
theoretical morality, actual law and administration with abstract
justice, and so forth. But Shakespear's perception of the fact that
all men, judged by the moral standard which they apply to others and
by which they justify their punishment of others, are fools and
scoundrels, does not date from the Dark Lady complication: he seems
to have been born with it. If in The Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer
Night's Dream the persons of the drama are not quite so ready for
treachery and murder as Laertes and even Hamlet himself (not to
mention the procession of ruffians who pass through the latest plays)
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