| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: but so much more readable, than the English; their evil is
done more effectively, in America for the masses, in French
for the few that care to read; but with us as with them, the
duties of literature are daily neglected, truth daily
perverted and suppressed, and grave subjects daily degraded
in the treatment. The journalist is not reckoned an
important officer; yet judge of the good he might do, the
harm he does; judge of it by one instance only: that when we
find two journals on the reverse sides of politics each, on
the same day, openly garbling a piece of news for the
interest of its own party, we smile at the discovery (no
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: Maria opened Miss Baker's closet unconcernedly. "What's the
matter with these old shoes?" she exclaimed, turning about
with a pair of half-worn silk gaiters in her hand. They
were by no means old enough to throw away, but Miss
Baker was almost beside herself. There was no telling what
might happen next. Her only thought was to be rid of Maria.
"Yes, yes, anything. You can have them; but go, go. There's
nothing else, not a thing."
Maria went out into the hall, leaving Miss Baker's door wide
open, as if maliciously. She had left the dirty pillow-case
on the floor in the hall, and she stood outside, between the
McTeague |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: were topping a rise in the middle of the afternoon, I saw
something that brought me to a sudden stop. Calling Nobs in a
whisper, I cautioned him to silence and kept him at heel while
I threw myself flat and watched, from behind a sheltering
shrub, a body of warriors approaching the cliff from the south.
I could see that they were Galus, and I guessed that Du-seen
led them. They had taken a shorter route to the pass and so
had overhauled me. I could see them plainly, for they were no
great distance away, and saw with relief that Ajor was not with them.
The cliffs before them were broken and ragged, those coming
from the east overlapping the cliffs from the west. Into the
The People That Time Forgot |
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 Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: XXIII.
REQUIESCAT.
THANK God! it is not within the power of one man's errors to
blight the promise of a life like that of Hope. It is but a
feeble destiny that is wrecked by passion, when it should be
ennobled. Aunt Jane and Kate watched Hope closely during her
years of probation, for although she fancied herself to be
keeping her own counsel, yet her career lay in broad light for
them. She was like yonder sailboat, which floats conspicuous by
night amid the path of moonbeams, and which yet seems to its
own voyagers to be remote and unseen upon a waste of waves.
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