| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: night.
Early the next morning--that is to say, four hours after their
stolen interview, and just as the earliest servant was heard
moving about--Stephen Smith went downstairs, portmanteau in hand.
Throughout the night he had intended to see Mr. Swancourt again,
but the sharp rebuff of the previous evening rendered such an
interview particularly distasteful. Perhaps there was another and
less honest reason. He decided to put it off. Whatever of moral
timidity or obliquity may have lain in such a decision, no
perception of it was strong enough to detain him. He wrote a note
in his room, which stated simply that he did not feel happy in the
 A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: and there was a singing in my ears, as I have heard there is to
drowning men, and then everything seemed passing away from me.
My soul seemed to go out from my body and float about the air.
I seem to remember that once the West Lighthouse was right under me,
and then there was a sort of agonizing feeling, as if I were
in an earthquake, and I came back and found you shaking my body.
I saw you do it before I felt you."
Then she began to laugh. It seemed a little uncanny to me,
and I listened to her breathlessly. I did not quite like it,
and thought it better not to keep her mind on the subject, so we
drifted on to another subject, and Lucy was like her old self again.
 Dracula |