| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: "But I am afraid you are chaffing me."
"I think not, sir," remarked Mrs. Miller very gently.
"Do, then, let me give you a row," he said to the young girl.
"It's quite lovely, the way you say that!" cried Daisy.
"It will be still more lovely to do it."
"Yes, it would be lovely!" said Daisy. But she made no movement
to accompany him; she only stood there laughing.
"I should think you had better find out what time it is,"
interposed her mother.
"It is eleven o'clock, madam," said a voice, with a foreign accent,
out of the neighboring darkness; and Winterbourne, turning, perceived
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: tubular threads, rolled into twisted strings, and thus render the
network sticky. It is sticky, in fact, and in such a way as to
provoke surprise. I bring a fine straw flat down upon three or
four rungs of a sector. However gentle the contact, adhesion is at
once established. When I lift the straw, the threads come with it
and stretch to twice or three times their length, like a thread of
India-rubber. At last, when over-taut, they loosen without
breaking and resume their original form. They lengthen by
unrolling their twist, they shorten by rolling it again; lastly,
they become adhesive by taking the glaze of the gummy moisture
wherewith they are filled.
The Life of the Spider |
