The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: which the child's face now received it fairly likened
my breach of the silence to the smash of a pane of glass.
It added to the interposing cry, as if to stay the blow,
that Mrs. Grose, at the same instant, uttered over my violence--
the shriek of a creature scared, or rather wounded, which, in turn,
within a few seconds, was completed by a gasp of my own.
I seized my colleague's arm. "She's there, she's there!"
Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she
had stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the
first feeling now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having
brought on a proof. She was there, and I was justified;
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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 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: withered from his face--happily for him--yet more happily for
myself, for in another instant I had certainly dragged him from
his perch. At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with so
black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a look did
they exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led
me to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde
in danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with
inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to
inflict pain. Yet the creature was astute; mastered his fury with
a great effort of the will; composed his two important letters,
one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and that he might receive actual
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |