| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: de Mortsauf is a woman who would hold the highest position wherever
she might be."
"Does she often come to Tours?"
"She never goes there. However," he added, correcting himself, "she
did go there lately to the ball given to the Duc d'Angouleme, who was
very gracious to her husband."
"It was she!" I exclaimed.
"She! who?"
"A woman with beautiful shoulders."
"You will meet a great many women with beautiful shoulders in
Touraine," he said, laughing. "But if you are not tired we can cross
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: foot and conducted by him, between twenty and thirty years since,
having for its object to carry the fur trade across the Rocky
Mountains, and to sweep the shores of the Pacific.
Finding that I took an interest in the subject, he expressed a
regret that the true nature and extent of his enterprise and its
national character and importance had never been understood, and
a wish that I would undertake to give an account of it. The
suggestion struck upon the chord of early associations already
vibrating in my mind. It occurred to me that a work of this kind
might comprise a variety of those curious details, so interesting
to me, illustrative of the fur trade; of its remote and
|
