| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: ears, a whining, wailing voice on the offside, saying:--"God ha'
mercy, I'm done for!" In one stride, Brunt saw the whole seething
smash of the Maribyrnong Plate before him, started in his saddle and
gave a yell of terror. The start brought the heels into Shackles'
side, and the scream hurt Shackles' feelings. He couldn't stop
dead; but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty yards, and
then, very gravely and judicially, bucked off Brunt--a shaking,
terror-stricken lump, while Regula Baddun made a neck-and-neck race
with Bobolink up the straight, and won by a short head--Petard a bad
third. Shackles' owner, in the Stand, tried to think that his
field-glasses had gone wrong. Regula Baddun's owner, waiting by the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: found old Aunt Patsy and Aunt Betsy Hale where they were around,
and said, "They went out back one night to visit the sick and
fell down the well and got drowned." I was going to drown some others,
but I gave up the idea, partly because I believed that if
I kept that up it would arose attention, and perhaps sympathy
with those people, and partly because it was not a large well and
would not hold any more anyway.
Still the story was unsatisfactory. Here was a set of new
characters who were become inordinately prominent and who
persisted in remaining so to the end; and back yonder was an
older set who made a large noise and a great to-do for a little
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: of wool-work dropping out of them. Photographs from old Italian
masterpieces hung on the walls, and views of Venetian bridges and
Swedish waterfalls which members of the family had seen years ago.
There were also one or two portraits of fathers and grandmothers,
and an engraving of John Stuart Mill, after the picture by Watts.
It was a room without definite character, being neither typically
and openly hideous, nor strenuously artistic, nor really comfortable.
Rachel roused herself from the contemplation of this familiar
picture.
"But this isn't very interesting for you," she said, looking up.
"Good Lord!" Hewet exclaimed. "I've never been so much interested
|
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 Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: thyself already."
"No matter for that," said Myles; "it is not to be borne that
they order others of us about as they do. I mean to speak to them
to-night, and tell them it shall not be."
He was as good as his word. That night, as the youngsters were
shouting and romping and skylarking, as they always did before
turning in, he stood upon his cot and shouted: "Silence! List to
me a little!" And then, in the hush that followed-- "I want those
bachelors to hear this: that we squires serve them no longer, and
if they would ha' some to wait upon them, they must get them
otherwheres than here. There be twenty of us to stand against
Men of Iron |
