| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: which, with all its imperfections, turned out such beautiful work for
the Elzevirs, Plantin, Aldus, and Didot is so completely forgotten,
that something must be said as to the obsolete gear on which Jerome-
Nicolas Sechard set an almost superstitious affection, for it plays a
part in this chronicle of great small things.
Sechard had been in his time a journeyman pressman, a "bear" in
compositors' slang. The continued pacing to and fro of the pressman
from ink-table to press, from press to ink-table, no doubt suggested
the nickname. The "bears," however, make matters even by calling the
compositors monkeys, on account of the nimble industry displayed by
those gentlemen in picking out the type from the hundred and fifty-two
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: first crisp maple-leaves began to spin across Miss
Hatchard's lawn, and the Virginia creeper on the
Memorial splashed the white porch with scarlet. It was
a golden triumphant September. Day by day the flame of
the Virginia creeper spread to the hillsides in wider
waves of carmine and crimson, the larches glowed like
the thin yellow halo about a fire, the maples blazed
and smouldered, and the black hemlocks turned to indigo
against the incandescence of the forest.
The nights were cold, with a dry glitter of stars so
high up that they seemed smaller and more vivid.
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