| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: and sword with other men, or am I only soothly a dull heavy
block, worth naught of any good?"
"Thou art a fool, sirrah!" answered Sir James, in his grimmest
tones. "Thinkest thou to learn all of knightly prowess in a year
and a half? Wait until thou art ripe, and then I will tell thee
if thou art fit to couch a lance or ride a course with a right
knight."
"Thou art an old bear!" muttered Myles to himself, as the old
one-eyed knight turned on his heel and strode away. "Beshrew me!
an I show thee not that I am as worthy to couch a lance as thou
one of these fine days!"
Men of Iron |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: Moliere's Mascarille, Marivaux's Frontin, and Dancourt's Lafleur--
those great representatives of audacious swindling, of cunning driven
to bay, of stratagem rising again from the ends of its broken wires--
were all quite second-rate by comparison with this giant of cleverness
and meanness. When in Paris you find a real type, he is no longer a
man, he is a spectacle; no longer a factor in life, but a whole life,
many lives.
Bake a plaster cast four times in a furnace, and you get a sort of
bastard imitation of Florentine bronze. Well, the thunderbolts of
numberless disasters, the pressure of terrible necessities, had
bronzed Contenson's head, as though sweating in an oven had three
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