| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: rags, worth about four million francs! The manufacturer washes the
rags and reduces them to a thin pulp, which is strained, exactly as a
cook strains sauce through a tamis, through an iron frame with a fine
wire bottom where the mark which give its name to the size of the
paper is woven. The size of this mould, as it is called, regulates the
size of the sheet.
"When I was with the Messieurs Didot," David continued, "they were
very much interested in this question, and they are still interested;
for the improvement which your father endeavored to make is a great
commercial requirement, and one of the crying needs of the time. And
for this reason: although linen lasts so much longer than cotton, that
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: should be so transcendently prized. It might have made Strether
hot or shy, as such secrets of others brought home sometimes do
make us; but he was held there by something so hard that it was
fairly grim. This was not the discomposure of last night; that had
quite passed--such discomposures were a detail; the real coercion
was to see a man ineffably adored. There it was again--it took
women, it took women; if to deal with them was to walk on water
what wonder that the water rose? And it had never surely risen
higher than round this woman. He presently found himself taking a
long look from her, and the next thing he knew he had uttered all
his thought. "You're afraid for your life!"
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