| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: back to the station; but later on, alone in the compartment (from
Wimbledon to Waterloo, before the glory of the District Railway) I
amended this declaration in the light of the sense that my friends
would probably after all not enjoy a monopoly of Mr. Saltram. I
won't pretend to have taken his vast measure on that first
occasion, but I think I had achieved a glimpse of what the
privilege of his acquaintance might mean for many persons in the
way of charges accepted. He had been a great experience, and it
was this perhaps that had put me into the frame of foreseeing how
we should all, sooner or later, have the honour of dealing with him
as a whole. Whatever impression I then received of the, amount 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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: was the life of Bouchet in a nutshell.
When I came back to the inn for a bit of breakfast, the landlady
was in the kitchen combing out her daughter's hair; and I made her
my compliments upon its beauty.
'Oh no,' said the mother; 'it is not so beautiful as it ought to
be. Look, it is too fine.'
Thus does a wise peasantry console itself under adverse physical
circumstances, and, by a startling democratic process, the defects
of the majority decide the type of beauty.
'And where,' said I, 'is monsieur?'
'The master of the house is upstairs,' she answered, 'making you a
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