| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: Rome, live once more. He adds to the glories of the middle ages by the
labors of steam, by new masterpieces of art under the protection of
Venice, who protected it of old. Monuments and nations crowd into his
little brain; there is room for them all. Empires and cities and
revolutions come and vanish in the course of a few hours, while Venice
alone expands and lives; for the Venice of his dreams is the empress
of the seas. She has two millions of inhabitants, the sceptre of
Italy, the mastery of the Mediterranean and the Indies!"
"What an opera is the brain of man! What an unfathomed abyss!--even to
those who, like Gall, have mapped it out," cried the physician.
"Dear Duchess," said Vendramin, "do not omit the last service that my
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: made no reply whatever.
>From that moment on Bassett was certain that David had not been
driven away from the ranch at all. What he did not know, and was
in no way to find out, was whether the two ranch hands knew that
he had gone into the mountains, or why. He surmised back of their
taciturnity a small mystery of their own, and perhaps a fear.
Possibly David's going was as much a puzzle to them as to him.
Conceivably, during the hours together on the range, or during the
winter snows, for ten years they had wrangled and argued over a
disappearance as mysterious in its way as Judson Clark's.
He gave up at last, having learned certain unimportant facts: that
The Breaking Point |
