| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: little more and the stream might have played, like a fire-
hose, on the Toll House roof. In front the ground drops as
sharply as it rises behind. There is just room for the road
and a sort of promontory of croquet ground, and then you can
lean over the edge and look deep below you through the wood.
I said croquet GROUND, not GREEN; for the surface was of
brown, beaten earth. The toll-bar itself was the only other
note of originality: a long beam, turning on a post, and
kept slightly horizontal by a counterweight of stones.
Regularly about sundown this rude barrier was swung, like a
derrick, across the road and made fast, I think, to a tree
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: Andrew killed; Prue dead too--repeat it as she might, it roused no
feeling in her. And we all get together in a house like this on a
morning like this, she said, looking out of the window. It was a
beautiful still day.
Suddenly Mr Ramsay raised his head as he passed and looked straight at
her, with his distraught wild gaze which was yet so penetrating, as if
he saw you, for one second, for the first time, for ever; and she
pretended to drink out of her empty coffee cup so as to escape him--to
escape his demand on her, to put aside a moment longer that imperious
need. And he shook his head at her, and strode on ("Alone" she heard
him say, "Perished" she heard him say) and like everything else this
To the Lighthouse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: Marquise d'Espard."
The old man withdrew. When the lawyer and the Marquis were alone, the
clerk shut the door, and seated himself unceremoniously at the office
table, where he laid out his papers and prepared to take down his
notes. Popinot had still kept his eye on M. d'Espard; he was watching
the effect on him of this crude statement, so painful for a man in
full possession of his reason. The Marquis d'Espard, whose face was
usually pale, as are those of fair men, suddenly turned scarlet with
anger; he trembled for an instant, sat down, laid his paper on the
chimney-piece, and looked down. In a moment he had recovered his
gentlemanly dignity, and looked steadily at the judge, as if to read
|
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 War in the Air by H. G. Wells: mean--were too busy most of them to trouble about us, and the
wind blew us--Heaven knows where the wind IS blowing us. It blew
us right out of action at the rate of eighty miles an hour or so.
Gott! what a wind that was! What a fight! And here we are!"
"Where?"
"In the air, Smallways--in the air! When we get down on the
earth again we shan't know what to do with our legs."
"But what's below us?"
"Canada, to the best of my knowledge--and a jolly bleak, empty,
inhospitable country it looks."
"But why ain't we right ways up?"
|
