The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: He thought her lips grew gray, but she looked up clear and
steady.
"I am glad you did not die. Yes, I can say that. As for
hand-shaking, my ideas may be peculiar as your own."
"She measures her words," he said, as to himself; "her very
eye-light is ruled by decorum; she is a machine, for work. She
has swept her child's heart clean of anger and revenge, even
scorn for the wretch that sold himself for money. There was
nothing else to sweep out, was there?"--bitterly,--"no
friendships, such as weak women nurse and coddle into being,--or
love, that they live in, and die for sometimes, in a silly way?"
 Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: as a hydroscope reveals springs in the bowels of the earth.
He was par excellence the type of a miner whose whole
existence is indissolubly connected with that of his mine.
He had lived there from his birth, and now that the works
were abandoned he wished to live there still. His son Harry
foraged for the subterranean housekeeping; as for himself,
during those ten years he had not been ten times above ground.
"Go up there! What is the good?" he would say, and refused
to leave his black domain. The place was remarkably healthy,
subject to an equable temperature; the old overman endured
neither the heat of summer nor the cold of winter.
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