| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: when a retinue was part of the state of persons of quality, and the
unattended person was supposed to be a common person of no quality,
earning a living; but this has now become so absurd that children and
young women are no longer told why they are forbidden to go about
alone, and have to be persuaded that the streets are dangerous places,
which of course they are; but people who are not educated to live
dangerously have only half a life, and are more likely to die
miserably after all than those who have taken all the common risks of
freedom from their childhood onward as matters of course.
The Conflict of Wills
The world wags in spite of its schools and its families because both
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: When the eyes of the Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral
image (which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to
sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was
seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder
either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened
with rage.
"Who dares,"--he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood
near him--"who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery?
Seize him and unmask him--that we may know whom we have to hang, at
sunrise, from the battlements!"
It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the
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