| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: He drew closer, and under the window.
'How are you this morning, Elfride? You look no better for your
long night's rest.'
She appeared at the door shortly after, took his offered arm, and
together they walked slowly down the gravel path leading to the
river and away under the trees.
Her resolution, sustained during the last fifteen hours, had been
to tell the whole truth, and now the moment had come.
Step by step they advanced, and still she did not speak. They
were nearly at the end of the walk, when Knight broke the silence.
'Well, what is the confession, Elfride?'
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: is to render with their aid, the artist has one main and
necessary resource which he must, in every case and upon any
theory, employ. He must, that is, suppress much and omit
more. He must omit what is tedious or irrelevant, and
suppress what is tedious and necessary. But such facts as,
in regard to the main design, subserve a variety of purposes,
he will perforce and eagerly retain. And it is the mark of
the very highest order of creative art to be woven
exclusively of such. There, any fact that is registered is
contrived a double or a treble debt to pay, and is at once an
ornament in its place, and a pillar in the main design.
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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 The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: of the sort the vessel cracks with a loud report, the potassium
chlorate descends sizzling upon the flame, the experimenter says
"Oh! Damn!" with astonishing heartiness and distinctness, and a lady
student in the back seats gets up and leaves the room.
Science is the organised conquest of Nature, and I can quite
understand that ancient libertine refusing to cooperate in her own
undoing. And I can quite understand, too, my father's preference
for what he called an illustrative experiment, which was simply an
arrangement of the apparatus in front of the class with nothing
whatever by way of material, and the Bunsen burner clean and cool,
and then a slow luminous description of just what you did put in it
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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 Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: he left him rending and tearing the flesh as he bolted great
pieces into his empty maw.
The following day Tarzan came within sight of the German
lines. From a wooded spur of the hills he looked down upon
the enemy's left flank and beyond to the British lines. His
position gave him a bird's-eye view of the field of battle, and
his keen eyesight picked out many details that would not have
been apparent to a man whose every sense was not trained
to the highest point of perfection as were the ape-man's. He
noted machine-gun emplacements cunningly hidden from the
view of the British and listening posts placed well out in No
Tarzan the Untamed |
