| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lone Star Ranger by Zane Grey: "I don't call it teasing. Floyd wants to spoon," declared Ruth,
emphatically. "He'd run after any woman."
"A fine compliment to me, Cousin Ruth," laughed Ray.
"I don't care," replied Ruth, stubbornly. "it's so. He's mushy.
And when he's been drinking and tries to kiss me--I hate him!"
There were steps on the hall floor.
"Hello, girls!" sounded out Lawson's voice, minus its usual
gaiety.
"Floyd, what's the matter?" asked Ray, presently. "I never saw
papa as he is to-night, nor you so--so worried. Tell me, what
has happened?"
The Lone Star Ranger |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: shutters of the dining-room were once more closed; the men
began to reappear from the interior and resume their stations
on the van; the last closed the door behind his exit; the van
drove away; and the house was once more left to itself,
looking blindly on the square with shuttered windows, as
though the whole affair had been a vision.
It was no vision, however; for, as I rose to my feet, and
thus brought my eyes a little nearer to the level of the
fanlight over the door, I saw that, though the day had still
some hours to run, the hall lamps had been lighted and left
burning. Plainly, then, guests were expected, and were not
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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 Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: manner. After the poor steward died, and as he
could not be replaced by a white man in this
Oriental port, Ransome had volunteered to do the
double work.
"I can do it all right, sir, as long as I go about it
quietly," he had assured me.
But obviously he couldn't be expected to take up
sick-nursing in addition. Moreover, the doctor
peremptorily ordered Mr. Burns ashore.
With a seaman on each side holding him up
under the arms, the mate went over the gangway
The Shadow Line |
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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: elbowed, and ran, their families following how they could.
Children fell, and were picked up to be rewarded by a blow. One
child, who had lost her parents, screamed steadily and with
increasing shrillness, as though verging towards a fit; an official
kept her by him, but no one else seemed so much as to remark her
distress; and I am ashamed to say that I ran among the rest. I was
so weary that I had twice to make a halt and set down my bundles in
the hundred yards or so between the pier and the railway station,
so that I was quite wet by the time that I got under cover. There
was no waiting-room, no refreshment room; the cars were locked; and
for at least another hour, or so it seemed, we had to camp upon the
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