| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: don't you?"
She coloured and laughed. "Ah, I see you ARE a friend after all,
and that is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for."
"It wasn't meant to be disagreeable," he returned amicably.
"Isn't marriage your vocation? Isn't it what you're all brought
up for?"
She sighed. "I suppose so. What else is there?"
"Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "You speak as if I ought to marry the
first man who came along."
"I didn't mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: succession, my eyes weary with being set against the wind, and how,
dropping suddenly over the edge of the down, I found myself in a new
world of warmth and shelter. The wind, from which I had escaped, 'as
from an enemy,' was seemingly quite local. It carried no clouds with
it, and came from such a quarter that it did not trouble the sea
within view. The two castles, black and ruinous as the rocks about
them, were still distinguishable from these by something more
insecure and fantastic in the outline, something that the last storm
had left imminent and the next would demolish entirely. It would be
difficult to render in words the sense of peace that took possession
of me on these three afternoons. It was helped out, as I have said,
|