| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: young pliant warmth.
When she had firmly returned him to his group, he remembered, by a connection
quite untraceable, that his mother's mother had been Scotch, and with head
thrown back, eyes closed, wide mouth indicating ecstasy, he sang, very slowly
and richly, "Loch Lomond."
But that was the last of his mellowness and jolly companionship. The man from
Sparta said he was a "bum singer," and for ten minutes Babbitt quarreled with
him, in a loud, unsteady, heroic indignation. They called for drinks till the
manager insisted that the place was closed. All the while Babbitt felt a hot
raw desire for more brutal amusements. When W. A. Rogers drawled, "What say we
go down the line and look over the girls?" he agreed savagely. Before they
|
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 Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: by an innkeeper from a neighbouring town. This was
considered an unexceptionable place for obtaining the
necessary food and rest: Host Trencher (as he was
jauntily called by the local newspaper) being a sub-
stantial man of high repute for catering through all the
county round. The tent was divided into first and
second-class compartments, and at the end of the first-
class division was a yet further enclosure for the most
exclusive, fenced of from the body of the tent by a
luncheon-bar, behind which the host himself stood
bustling about in white apron and shirt-sleeves, and look-
Far From the Madding Crowd |
