| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Then the great Hall was wholly broken down,
And the broad woodland parcell'd into farms;
And where the two contrived their daughter's good,
Lies the hawk's cast, the mole has made his run,
The hedgehog underneath the plaintain bores,
The rabbit fondles his own harmless face,
The slow-worm creeps, and the thin weasel there
Follows the mouse, and all is open field.
SEA DREAMS.
SEA DREAMS.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: "I seem to be walking in the dark," replied the Mayoress.
"The jest would be lost in an explanation," remarked Gatien.
"Nowadays," Lousteau went on, "a novelist draws characters, and
instead of a 'simple outline,' he unveils the human heart and gives
you some interest either in Lubin or in Toinette."
"For my part, I am alarmed at the progress of public knowledge in the
matter of literature," said Bianchon. "Like the Russians, beaten by
Charles XII., who at least learned the art of war, the reader has
learned the art of writing. Formerly all that was expected of a
romance was that it should be interesting. As to style, no one cared
for that, not even the author; as to ideas--zero; as to local color--
The Muse of the Department |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: the shape of ramping, screaming countrybreds, without making their
lives a burden to them.
Most Assistant Commissioners develop a bent for some special work
after their first hot weather in the country. The boys with
digestions hope to write their names large on the Frontier and
struggle for dreary places like Bannu and Kohat. The bilious ones
climb into the Secretariat. Which is very bad for the liver.
Others are bitten with a mania for District work, Ghuznivide coins
or Persian poetry; while some, who come of farmers' stock, find that
the smell of the Earth after the Rains gets into their blood, and
calls them to "develop the resources of the Province." These men
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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 Octopus by Frank Norris: cheeks. His yellow hair had a tendency to curl in a forward
direction, just in front of the ears.
Beside him, Presley made the sharpest of contrasts. Presley
seemed to have come of a mixed origin; appeared to have a nature
more composite, a temperament more complex. Unlike Harran
Derrick, he seemed more of a character than a type. The sun had
browned his face till it was almost swarthy. His eyes were a
dark brown, and his forehead was the forehead of the
intellectual, wide and high, with a certain unmistakable lift
about it that argued education, not only of himself, but of his
people before him. The impression conveyed by his mouth and chin
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