| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: friendship. He doubtless told me his simple story, but the matter
comes back in a kind of sense of my being rather the mouthpiece, of
my having had to put it together for him. He took it from me in
this form without a groan, and I gave it him quite as it came; he
took it again and again, spending his odd half-hours with me as if
for the very purpose of learning how idiotically he was in love.
He told me I made him see things: to begin with, hadn't I first
made him see Flora Saunt? I wanted him to give her up and lucidly
informed him why; on which he never protested nor contradicted,
never was even so alembicated as to declare just for the sake of
the point that he wouldn't. He simply and pointlessly didn't, and
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: "The day my mother, died, the ninth after my birth, I was
consigned to the care of the cheapest nurse my father could find;
who suckled her own child at the same time, and lodged as many more
as she could get, in two cellar-like apartments.
"Poverty, and the habit of seeing children die off her hands,
had so hardened her heart, that the office of a mother did not
awaken the tenderness of a woman; nor were the feminine caresses
which seem a part of the rearing of a child, ever bestowed on me.
The chicken has a wing to shelter under; but I had no bosom to
nestle in, no kindred warmth to foster me. Left in dirt, to cry
with cold and hunger till I was weary, and sleep without ever being
|
