| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: sons and brothers! But truly not without you and
your love and strengthening could I have made aught! A
brother indeed for my left hand and my right hand, and to
beckon me on, two dear sons!''
CHAPTER XXXIV
TWO years! It was March, 1496, when he sailed in the
_Nina_. It was the summer of 1498 when Juan Lepe
was sent as physician with two ships put forth from
San Domingo by the Adelantado upon a rumor that the
Portuguese had trespassed, landing from a great carrack
upon Guadaloupe. Five days from Hispaniola we met a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: to the left. You will come out onto the high road, and then
turn to the right.'
'And where do we turn off the high road? As in summer, or the
winter way?' asked Nikita.
'The winter way. As soon as you turn off you'll see some
bushes, and opposite them there is a way-mark--a large oak, one
with branches--and that's the way.'
Vasili Andreevich turned the horse back and drove through the
outskirts of the village.
'Why not stay the night?' Isay shouted after them.
But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and touched up the horse.
Master and Man |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: a man of benevolence? He gave ten thousand rupees last week to the
famine fund. Is Strobo on Government House list? Is he ever
invited to dine with the Viceroy? No, because Strobo keeps a hotel!
Look at Rosario--where does Rosario come in? Nowhere, because
Rosario is a clerk, and a subordinate. Yet Rosario is a man of wide
reading and a very accomplished fellow!'
It became more or less necessary to argue then, and the commonplaces
with which I opposed him called forth a wealth of detail bearing
most picturesquely upon his stay among us. I began to think he had
never hated English rigidity and English snobbery until he came to
Simla, and that he and Strobo and Rosario had mingled their
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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 The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: he should recognise from the first that he has only one tool
in his workshop, and that tool is sympathy. (13)
The second duty, far harder to define, is moral. There are a
thousand different humours in the mind, and about each of
them, when it is uppermost, some literature tends to be
deposited. Is this to be allowed? Not certainly in every
case, and yet perhaps in more than rigourists would fancy.
It were to be desired that all literary work, and chiefly
works of art, issued from sound, human, healthy, and potent
impulses, whether grave or laughing, humorous, romantic, or
religious.
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