| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: The /juge de paix/, named Clousier, was formerly a lawyer in Limoges,
where cases had deserted him because he insisted on putting into
practice that fine axiom that the lawyer is the best judge of the
client and the case. In 1809 he obtained his present post, the meagre
salary of which just enabled him to live. He had now reached a stage
of honorable but absolute poverty. After a residence of twenty-one
years in this poor village the worthy man, thoroughly countrified,
looked, top-coat and all, exactly like the farmers about him.
Under this coarse exterior Clousier hid a clear-sighted mind, given to
lofty meditation on public policy, though he himself had fallen into a
state of complete indifference, derived from his intimate knowledge of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: net; and he wallowed there like a fish.
"A body would think there was something in this," said the
missionary. "But if these tales are true, I wonder what about my
tales!"
Now the flaming of Akaanga's torch drew near in the night; and the
misshapen hands groped in the meshes of the net; and they took the
missionary between the finger and the thumb, and bore him dripping
in the night and silence to the place of the ovens of Miru. And
there was Miru, ruddy in the glow of the ovens; and there sat her
four daughters, and made the kava of the dead; and there sat the
comers out of the islands of the living, dripping and lamenting.
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