| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: were saying, and pushed his crutch away from him with an impatient
gesture as he watched the active lads going through all sorts of
comical gymnastics. Beth, who was collecting the scattered
Author cards, looked up and said, in her shy yet friendly way,
"I'm afraid you are tired. Can I do anything for you?"
"Talk to me, please. It's dull, sitting by myself," answered
Frank, who had evidently been used to being made much of at home.
If he asked her to deliver a Latin oration, it would not
have seemed a more impossible task to bashful Beth, but there
was no place to run to, no Jo to hide behind now, and the poor
boy looked so wistfully at her that she bravely resolved to try.
Little Women |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: offences with our hands, make them great and bright before us like
the sun, make us eat them and drink them for our diet. Blind us to
the offences of our beloved, cleanse them from our memories, take
them out of our mouths for ever. Let all here before Thee carry
and measure with the false balances of love, and be in their own
eyes and in all conjunctures the most guilty. Help us at the same
time with the grace of courage, that we be none of us cast down
when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our happiness or our
integrity: touch us with fire from the altar, that we may be up
and doing to rebuild our city: in the name and by the method of
him in whose words of prayer we now conclude.
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