| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: No contrast could be greater or more startling than that seen in the
companionship of these two men. It was like seeing a frail and
graceful shrub that has grown from the hollow trunk of some gnarled
willow, withered by age, blasted by lightning, standing decrepit; one
of those majestic trees that painters love; the trembling sapling
takes shelter there from storms. One was a god, the other was an
angel; one the poet that feels, the other the poet that expresses--a
prophet in sorrow, a levite in prayer.
They went out together without speaking.
"Did you mark how he called him to him?" cried the sergeant of the
watch when the footsteps of the couple were no longer audible on the
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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 Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: spirits, and that the bridegroom's face was wrung round ahint
him?"
"Ye needna care wha did it, or how it was done," said Aislie
Gourlay; "but I'll uphaud it for nae stickit job, and that the
lairds and leddies ken weel this day."
"And was it true," said Annie Winnie, "sin ye ken sae muckle
about it, that the picture of auld Sir Malise Ravenswood came
down on the ha' floor, and led out the brawl before them a'?"
"Na," said Ailsie; "but into the ha' came the picture--and I ken
weel how it came there--to gie them a warning that pride wad get
a fa'. But there's as queer a ploy, cummers, as ony o' thae,
The Bride of Lammermoor |
