| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: I share Maury's opinion, and I was able to study the phenomenon
in the very midst, where vessels rarely penetrate. Above us floated
products of all kinds, heaped up among these brownish plants;
trunks of trees torn from the Andes or the Rocky Mountains, and floated
by the Amazon or the Mississippi; numerous wrecks, remains of keels,
or ships' bottoms, side-planks stove in, and so weighted with shells
and barnacles that they could not again rise to the surface.
And time will one day justify Maury's other opinion, that these
substances thus accumulated for ages will become petrified by
the action of the water and will then form inexhaustible coal-mines--
a precious reserve prepared by far-seeing Nature for the moment
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: it stood.
John Weightman was like the house into which he had built himself
thirty years ago, and in which his ideals and ambitions were
incrusted.
He was a self-made man. But in making himself he had chosen a
highly esteemed pattern and worked according to the approved
rules.
There was nothing irregular, questionable, flamboyant about him.
He was solid, correct, and justly successful.
His minor tastes, of course, had been carefully kept up to date.
At the proper time, pictures of the Barbizon masters, old English
|
