| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: an erect posture, for my knees were giving way under me--and just
at my feet lay the still glowing end of a match!
I had to swallow twice before I could speak. Then I said sharply:
"Who's there?"
The man was so close it is a wonder I had not walked into him;
his voice was right at my ear.
"I am sorry I startled you," he said quietly. "I was afraid to
speak suddenly, or move, for fear I would do--what I have done."
It was Mr. Harbison.
"I--I thought you were--it is very late," I managed to say, with
dry lips. "Do you know where the electric switch is?"
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: The first of these papers, evidently a rough sketch, betrays by its
style and by its length the many emendations, the heartfelt alarms,
the innumerable terrors caused by a desire to please; the changes of
expression and the hesitation between the whirl of ideas that beset a
man as he indites his first love-letter--a letter he never will
forget, each line the result of a reverie, each word the subject of
long cogitation, while the most unbridled passion known to man feels
the necessity of the most reserved utterance, and like a giant
stooping to enter a hovel, speaks humbly and low, so as not to alarm a
girl's soul.
No antiquary ever handled his palimpsests with greater respect than I
Louis Lambert |
