| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: Carley until at length she stepped up to the desk and interrupted the
conversation there.
"Is this a hotel?" she queried, brusquely.
The shirt-sleeved individual leisurely turned and replied, "Yes, ma'am."
And Carley said: "No one would recognize it by the courtesy shown. I have
been standing here waiting to register."
With the same leisurely case and a cool, laconic stare the clerk turned the
book toward her. "Reckon people round here ask for what they want."
Carley made no further comment. She assuredly recognized that what she had
been accustomed to could not be expected out here. What she most wished to
do at the moment was to get close to the big open grate where a cheery red-
The Call of the Canyon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: the good in all things; where he has even a fear that he does
not wholly understand, there he should be wholly silent; and
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
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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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: roadside, her bell slowly beating time to the movement of her
ruminating jaws, her big red face crawled over by half a
dozen flies, a monument of content.
A little farther, and we struck to the left up a mountain
road, and for two hours threaded one valley after another,
green, tangled, full of noble timber, giving us every now and
again a sight of Mount Saint Helena and the blue hilly
distance, and crossed by many streams, through which we
splashed to the carriage-step. To the right or the left,
there was scarce any trace of man but the road we followed; I
think we passed but one ranchero's house in the whole
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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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I'm a fellow, don't you see? that's--well, getting on."
I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly.
"Yes, you're getting on." Oh, but I felt helpless!
I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little idea
of how he seemed to know that and to play with it.
"And you can't say I've not been awfully good, can you?"
I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much
better it would have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able.
"No, I can't say that, Miles."
"Except just that one night, you know--!"
"That one night?" I couldn't look as straight as he.
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