| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: and then keelboating died a permanent death. The keelboatman
became a deck hand, or a mate, or a pilot on the steamer;
and when steamer-berths were not open to him, he took a berth
on a Pittsburgh coal-flat, or on a pine-raft constructed
in the forests up toward the sources of the Mississippi.
In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the river from end
to end was flaked with coal-fleets and timber rafts, all managed
by hand, and employing hosts of the rough characters whom I
have been trying to describe. I remember the annual processions
of mighty rafts that used to glide by Hannibal when I was a boy,--
an acre or so of white, sweet-smelling boards in each raft,
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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 Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: For I can see what I can see,
And I'm accordingly alone.
With open heart and open door,
I love my friends, I like my neighbors;
But if I try to tell you more,
Your doubts will overmatch my labors.
"This pipe would never make me calm,
This bowl my grief would never drown.
For grief like mine there is no balm
In Gilead, or in Tilbury Town.
And if I see what I can see,
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