| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: grounds; only varied by solitary rambles on the moors, and visits
to the grave of his wife, mostly at evening, or early morning
before other wanderers were abroad. But he was too good to be
thoroughly unhappy long. HE didn't pray for Catherine's soul to
haunt him. Time brought resignation, and a melancholy sweeter than
common joy. He recalled her memory with ardent, tender love, and
hopeful aspiring to the better world; where he doubted not she was
gone.
And he had earthly consolation and affections also. For a few
days, I said, he seemed regardless of the puny successor to the
departed: that coldness melted as fast as snow in April, and ere
Wuthering Heights |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: neat type-written notes and then resumed,--
"The self-knowledge of matter in motion."
"Skip it," put in the first tennis boy.
"We went to those lectures ourselves," explained the second, whirling
through another dishevelled notebook. "Oh, yes. Hobbes and his gang.
There is only one substance, matter, but it doesn't strictly exist.
Bodies exist. We've got Hobbes. Go on."
The instructor went forward a few pages more in his exhaustive volume.
He had attended all the lectures but three throughout the year, taking
them down in short-hand. Laryngitis had kept him from those three, to
which however, he had sent a stenographic friend so that the chain was
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