| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: his teeth with a bit of wood, pouring over the side a
bright stream of water out of his lips; the fat Rajah
dozed in a shabby deck-chair,--and at the turn of every
bend the two walls of leaves reappeared running
parallel along the banks, with their impenetrable solidity
fading at the top to a vaporous mistiness of countless
slender twigs growing free, of young delicate branches
shooting from the topmost limbs of hoary trunks, of
feathery heads of climbers like delicate silver sprays
standing up without a quiver. There was not a sign
of a clearing anywhere; not a trace of human habita-
End of the Tether |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: century. Diard now became a sort of business man, and concerned
himself in several of those affairs which are called SHADY in the
slang of the law-courts. He practised the decent thievery by which so
many men, cleverly masked, or hidden in the recesses of the political
world, make their fortunes,--thievery which, if done in the streets by
the light of an oil lamp, would see a poor devil to the galleys, but,
under gilded ceilings and by the light of candelabra, is sanctioned.
Diard brought up, monopolized, and sold sugars; he sold offices; he
had the glory of inventing the "man of straw" for lucrative posts
which it was necessary to keep in his own hands for a short time; he
bought votes, receiving, on one occasion, so much per cent on the
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