| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: cannot easily be found than two Greek epigrammatists
will afford us in their accounts of
human life, which I shall lay before the reader in
English prose.
Posidippus, a comick poet, utters this complaint:
"Through which of the paths of life is it eligible to
pass? In public assemblies are debates and troublesome
affairs: domestick privacies are haunted with
anxieties; in the country is labour; on the sea is
terrour: in a foreign land, he that has money must
live in fear, he that wants it must pine in distress:
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: great book, like a Bible, lay on each table, before the vacant seat.
A pause of some seconds succeeded, filled up by the low, vague hum
of numbers; Miss Miller walked from class to class, hushing this
indefinite sound.
A distant bell tinkled: immediately three ladies entered the room,
each walked to a table and took her seat. Miss Miller assumed the
fourth vacant chair, which was that nearest the door, and around
which the smallest of the children were assembled: to this inferior
class I was called, and placed at the bottom of it.
Business now began, the day's Collect was repeated, then certain
texts of Scripture were said, and to these succeeded a protracted
Jane Eyre |
