The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: Once the chill of my opposition was removed, his own pent-up excitement
had play. He too got up and paced. He too gesticulated and shouted. We
behaved like men inspired. We were men inspired.
"We'll settle all that!" he said in answer to some incidental difficulty
that had pulled me up. "We'll soon settle that! We'll start the drawings
for mouldings this very night."
"We'll start them now," I responded, and we hurried off to the laboratory
to begin upon this work forthwith.
I was like a child in Wonderland all that night. The dawn found us both
still at work - we kept our electric light going heedless of the day. I
remember now exactly how these drawings looked. I shaded and tinted while
The First Men In The Moon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: bottles of old wine with a little "liqueur des iles," a treasure left
over from her former business.
"Agathe," she said at dessert, "we must let him smoke his cigars," and
she offered some to Philippe.
These two poor creatures fancied that if they let the fellow take his
ease, he would like his home and stay in it; both, therefore, tried to
endure his tobacco-smoke, though each loathed it. That sacrifice was
not so much as noticed by Philippe.
On the morrow, Agathe looked ten years older. Her terrors calmed,
reflection came back to her, and the poor woman had not closed an eye
throughout that horrible night. She was now reduced to six hundred
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