| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: probably gone to bed in a barn when drunk, and smoked his
pipe there; and so a barn was burnt. He had the reputation
of being a clever man, had been there some three months
waiting for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as
much longer; but he was quite domesticated and contented,
since he got his board for nothing, and thought that he was
well treated.
He occupied one window, and I the other; and I saw that
if one stayed there long, his principal business would be to
look out the window. I had soon read all the tracts that
were left there, and examined where former prisoners had
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: meeting maintained us in our previous mental condition; but it
lessened our gay lightheartedness.
"Poor man!" said Pauline, with that accent which removes from the
compassion of a woman all that is mortifying in human pity, "ought we
not to feel ashamed of our happiness in presence of such misery?"
"Nothing is so cruelly painful as to have powerless desires," I
answered. "Those two poor creatures, the father and son, will never
know how keen our sympathy for them is, any more than the world will
know how beautiful are their lives; they are laying up their treasures
in heaven."
"Oh, how poor this country is!" she said, pointing to a field enclosed
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