| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: must know best. She blamed herself for the extent
of her fears, and resolved never to think so seriously
on the subject again.
Her resolution was supported by Isabella's behaviour
in their parting interview. The Thorpes spent the last
evening of Catherine's stay in Pulteney Street, and nothing
passed between the lovers to excite her uneasiness,
or make her quit them in apprehension. James was in
excellent spirits, and Isabella most engagingly placid.
Her tenderness for her friend seemed rather the first feeling
of her heart; but that at such a moment was allowable;
Northanger Abbey |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: months that had elapsed. He had lived, in spite of himself, into
his change of feeling, and in wandering over the earth had
wandered, as might be said, from the circumference to the centre of
his desert. He had settled to his safety and accepted perforce his
extinction; figuring to himself, with some colour, in the likeness
of certain little old men he remembered to have seen, of whom, all
meagre and wizened as they might look, it was related that they had
in their time fought twenty duels or been loved by ten princesses.
They indeed had been wondrous for others while he was but wondrous
for himself; which, however, was exactly the cause of his haste to
renew the wonder by getting back, as he might put it, into his own
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