| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: face was almost undistinguishable. "Oh, well, then, we talked
about opera, the realities and illusions of the stage, of
dresses, of people's names, and things of that sort."
"Nothing of importance," he said courteously. Mrs. Travers moved
forward and he stepped to one side. Inside the Cage two Malay
hands were hanging round lanterns, the light of which fell on Mr.
Travers' bowed head as he sat in his chair.
When they were all assembled for the evening meal Jorgenson
strolled up from nowhere in particular as his habit was, and
speaking through the muslin announced that Captain Lingard begged
to be excused from joining the company that evening. Then he
The Rescue |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: little after, and the whole east glowed with gold and scarlet,
and the hollow of heaven was filled with the daylight.
The isle--the undiscovered, the scarce believed-in--now lay
before them and close aboard; and Herrick thought that never
in his dreams had he beheld anything more strange and delicate.
The beach was excellently white, the continuous barrier of trees
inimitably green; the land perhaps ten feet high, the trees
thirty more. Every here and there, as the schooner coasted
northward, the wood was intermitted; and he could see clear over
the inconsiderable strip of land (as a man looks over a wall) to
the lagoon within--and clear over that again to where the far
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