| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: 'Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?'
'Oh, no! it hasn't happened for years.'
'Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator boats in service?'
'Just for police duty--nothing more. They merely go up and down
now and then. The present generation of alligators know them
as easy as a burglar knows a roundsman; when they see one coming,
they break camp and go for the woods.'
After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-off the alligator business,
he dropped easily and comfortably into the historical vein, and told of some
tremendous feats of half-a-dozen old-time steamboats of his acquaintance,
dwelling at special length upon a certain extraordinary performance of his
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: With his dead eyes turned on me all aglaze.
The Tavern has a story, but no man
Can tell us what it is. We only know
That once long after midnight, years ago,
A stranger galloped up from Tilbury Town,
Who brushed, and scared, and all but overran
That skirt-crazed reprobate, John Evereldown.
Sonnet
Oh for a poet -- for a beacon bright
To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray;
To spirit back the Muses, long astray,
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