| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: entrancingly beautiful that they at once drew tears of sorrow and
delight from my eyes. She sang, and her voice flowed in a rich
cadence, swelling or dying away like a nightingale of the woods.
"When she had finished, she gave the guitar to Agatha, who at first
declined it. She played a simple air, and her voice accompanied it
in sweet accents, but unlike the wondrous strain of the stranger.
The old man appeared enraptured and said some words which Agatha
endeavoured to explain to Safie, and by which he appeared to wish
to express that she bestowed on him the greatest delight by her music.
"The days now passed as peaceably as before, with the sole alteration
that joy had taken place of sadness in the countenances of my friends.
Frankenstein |
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: she neatly pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall,
facing a lady who met his eyes as with an intention suddenly
determined, and whose features--not freshly young, not markedly
fine, but on happy terms with each other--came back to him as from
a recent vision. For a moment they stood confronted; then the
moment placed her: he had noticed her the day before, noticed her
at his previous inn, where--again in the hall--she had been briefly
engaged with some people of his own ship's company. Nothing had
actually passed between them, and he would as little have been able
to say what had been the sign of her face for him on the first
occasion as to name the ground of his present recognition.
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