| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: horizon, no outline, no shape for the eye to rest upon, nothing
for the hand to grasp. An obscurity that seemed without limit in
space and time had submerged the universe like a destroying
flood.
A lull of the breeze kept for a time the small boat in the
neighbourhood of the brig. The hoisted sail, invisible, fluttered
faintly, mysteriously, and the boat rising and falling bodily to
the passage of each invisible undulation of the waters seemed to
repose upon a living breast. Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat
up erect, expectant and silent. Mrs. Travers had drawn her cloak
close around her body. Their glances plunged infinitely deep into
The Rescue |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: in confidence some signal mark of piety." There lies the
sting. Am I not right? These are the words you fear?'
'These are the words,' replied my father. 'Lucy, you
remember Priestley? Two days before he disappeared, he
carried me to the summit of an isolated butte; we could see
around us for ten miles; sure, if in any quarter of this land
a man were safe from spies, it were in such a station; but it
was in the very ague-fit of terror that he told me, and that
I heard, his story. He had received a letter such as this;
and he submitted to my approval an answer, in which he
offered to resign a third of his possessions. I conjured
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