| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: did sparkle, like that French liqueur in which are mingled little
flakes of gold, and handed it to me.
I bowed to her and drank. I suppose the fluid was water, but to
me it tasted more like strong champagne, dashed with Chateau
Yquem. It was delicious. More, its effects were distinctly
peculiar. Something quick and subtle ran through my veins;
something that for a few moments seemed to burn away the
obscureness which blurs our thought. I began to understand
several problems that had puzzled me, and then lost their
explanations in the midst of light, inner light, I mean.
Moreover, of a sudden it seemed to me as though a window had been
When the World Shook |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: magazine, always running down his prey of notorieties in
that quarter of Europe in which Miss Vance and her
charges chanced to be.
When he came in July he found them in a humble little inn
in Bozen. He looked with contempt at the stone floors,
the clean cell-like chambers, each with its narrow bed,
and blue stone ewer perched on a wooden stool; and he
sniffed with disgust when breakfast was served on a table
set out in the Platz.
"Don't know," he said, "whether I can digest food, eating
out of doors. Myself, I never give in to these foreign
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