| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: conjecture,--proving it as strongly, as an argument a priori could prove
such a thing to a philosophic mind, That it was Yorick's and no one's
else:--It was proved to be so, a posteriori, the day after, when Yorick
sent a servant to my uncle Toby's house to enquire after it.
It seems that Yorick, who was inquisitive after all kinds of knowledge, had
borrowed Stevinus of my uncle Toby, and had carelesly popped his sermon, as
soon as he had made it, into the middle of Stevinus; and by an act of
forgetfulness, to which he was ever subject, he had sent Stevinus home, and
his sermon to keep him company.
Ill-fated sermon! Thou wast lost, after this recovery of thee, a second
time, dropped thru' an unsuspected fissure in thy master's pocket, down
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: he said cheerfully. `It's a lady's privilege.'
XIX
JULY CAME ON with that breathless, brilliant heat which makes
the plains of Kansas and Nebraska the best corn country in the world.
It seemed as if we could hear the corn growing in the night;
under the stars one caught a faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odoured
cornfields where the feathered stalks stood so juicy and green.
If all the great plain from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains
had been under glass, and the heat regulated by a thermometer,
it could not have been better for the yellow tassels that were
ripening and fertilizing the silk day by day. The cornfields were
My Antonia |
