| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: literary tasks. Hi has seen marvels, and he has told of them in a marvelous
way. There is scarcely an aspect of contemporary Japanese life, scarcely an
element in the social, political, and military questions involved in the
present conflict with Russia which is not made clear in one or another of
the books with which he has charmed American readers.
He characterizes Kwaidan as "stories and studies of strange things." A
hundred thoughts suggested by the book might be written down, but most of
them would begin and end with this fact of strangeness. To read the very
names in the table of contents is like listening to a Buddhist bell, struck
somewhere far away. Some of his tales are of the long ago, and yet they
seem to illumine the very souls and minds of the little men who are at this
Kwaidan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: her, she mustn't be charming; and this frankly in spite of the stigma
of failure in the tie where failure always most showed. It was no test
there--when indeed WAS it a test there?--for Monsieur de Vionnet
had been a brute. She had lived for years apart from him--which was
of course always a horrid position; but Miss Gostrey's impression
of the matter had been that she could scarce have made a better
thing of it had she done it on purpose to show she was amiable. She
was so amiable that nobody had had a word to say; which was luckily
not the case for her husband. He was so impossible that she had the
advantage of all her merits.
It was still history for Strether that the Comte de Vionnet--it
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