The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: meeting as to whether or not weeds should be removed from the
graves of the Union soldiers near those of Confederate soldiers.
The appearance of the scraggly Yankee mounds defeated all the
efforts of the ladies to beautify those of their own dead.
Immediately the fires which smoldered beneath tight basques flamed
wildly and the two organizations split up and glared hostilely.
The Sewing Circle was in favor of the removal of the weeds, the
Ladies of the Beautification were violently opposed.
Mrs. Meade expressed the views of the latter group when she said:
"Dig up the weeds off Yankee graves? For two cents, I'd dig up all
the Yankees and throw them in the city dump!"
 Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: Dracontides, that Pericles should bring in the accounts of the moneys he
had expended, and lodge them with the Prytanes; and that the judges,
carrying their suffrage from the altar in the Acropolis, should examine
and determine the business in the city. This last clause Hagnon took
out of the decree, and moved that the causes should be tried before
fifteen hundred jurors, whether they should be styled prosecutions for
robbery, or bribery, or any kind of malversation. Aspasia, Pericles
begged off, shedding, as Aeschines says, many tears at the trial, and
personally entreating the jurors. But fearing how it might go with
Anaxagoras, he sent him out of the city. And finding that in Phidias's
case he had miscarried with the people, being afraid of impeachment, he
|