| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: heroism: every Frenchman is naturally courageous: therefore
every Frenchman is a hero." But we, who have been trained at once
in a sounder school of morals, and in a greater respect for facts,
and for language as the expression of facts, shall be careful, I
hope, not to trifle thus with that potent and awful engine--human
speech. We shall eschew likewise, I hope, a like abuse of the
word "moral," which has crept from the French press now and then,
not only into our own press, but into the writings of some of our
military men, who, as Englishmen, should have known better. We
were told again and again, during the late war, that the moral
effect of such a success had been great; that the MORALE of the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: better the police cell and the chances of a jury trial, than
the miserable certainty of death at a dyke-side before the
next winter's dawn, or death a little later in the gas-
lighted wards of an infirmary.
He rose on aching legs, and stumbled here and there among the
rubbish heaps, still circumvented by the yawning crater of
the quarry; or perhaps he only thought so, for the darkness
was already dense, the snow was growing thicker, and he moved
like a blind man, and with a blind man's terrors. At last he
climbed a fence, thinking to drop into the road, and found
himself staggering, instead, among the iron furrows of a
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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 Young Forester by Zane Grey: steps to my mustang, pondering upon this new turn in my affairs.
"Things are bound to happen to me," I concluded, "and I may as well make up
my mind to that."
While standing beside Hal, undecided as to my next move, I heard a whistle.
It was faint, perhaps miles away, yet unmistakably it was the whistle of an
engine. I wondered if the railroad turned round this side of the peaks.
Mounting Hal, I rode down the forest to the point where I had seen the men,
and there came upon a trail. I proceeded along this in the direction the
men had taken. I had come again to the slow-rising level that I had noted
earlier in my morning's journey. After several miles a light or opening in
the forest ahead caused me to use more caution. As I rode forward I saw a
The Young Forester |
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 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: old Jonathan has not come with them. Why, it is seven
o'clock? Ah, there he is!"
A knock had come to the door, and, there being nobody
else to answer it, Clare went out. He returned to the
room with a small package in his hand.
"It is not Jonathan, after all," he said.
"How vexing!" said Tess.
The packet had been brought by a special messenger, who
had arrived at Talbothays from Emminster Vicarage
immediately after the departure of the married couple,
and had followed them hither, being under injunction to
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
