| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: out. We weren't sint here to wurrk; we were sint here to foight."
"Fight? Why?" asked Orde.
"Oh, I dunno," replied the Rough Red easily. "Me boss and the blank
of a blank blanked blank that's attimptin' to droive this river has
some sort of a row."
"Jimmy," said Orde, "didn't you know that I am the gentleman last
mentioned?"
"What!"
"I'm driving this river, and that's my dam-keeper you've got hid
away somewhere here, and that's my water you're planning to waste!"
"What?" repeated the Rough Red, but in a different tone of voice.
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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 Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: satisfy their minds concerned with the safe binding of free ships
to the strong, muddy, enslaved earth. "You had better put another
bight of a hawser astern, Mr. Mate," is the usual phrase in their
mouth. I brand them for renegades, because most of them have been
sailors in their time. As if the infirmities of old age - the gray
hair, the wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, and the knotted
veins of the hands - were the symptoms of moral poison, they prowl
about the quays with an underhand air of gloating over the broken
spirit of noble captives. They want more fenders, more breasting-
ropes; they want more springs, more shackles, more fetters; they
want to make ships with volatile souls as motionless as square
 The Mirror of the Sea |