| 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: for the improvement which your father endeavored to make is a great
commercial requirement, and one of the crying needs of the time. And
for this reason: although linen lasts so much longer than cotton, that
it is in reality cheaper in the end, the poor would rather make the
smaller outlay in the first instance, and, by virtue of the law of Vae
victis! pay enormously more before they have done. The middle classes
do the same. So there is a scarcity of linen. In England, where four-
fifths of the population use cotton to the exclusion of linen, they
make nothing but cotton paper. The cotton paper is very soft and
easily creased to begin with, and it has a further defect: it is so
soluble that if you seep a book made of cotton paper in water for
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: "A paper written by the hand, and signed with the name,
of Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde. Written after you, madame, had left
him for dead, and while you, sir, had gone--not very fast--
for the doctor."
The marquis looked at his mother; she turned away, looking vaguely round her.
"I must sit down," she said in a low tone, going toward the bench on which
Newman had been sitting.
"Couldn't you have spoken to me alone?" said the marquis to Newman,
with a strange look.
"Well, yes, if I could have been sure of speaking to your mother alone, too,"
Newman answered. "But I have had to take you as I could get you."
|
