| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
* * * *
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
 Prufrock/Other Observations |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: membership in the order would be made pleasant to him.
This speech was received with great applause, mixed with cries of:
"That's the talk! "He's a good fellow, anyway, if he _is_ a teetotaler!"
"Drink his health!" "Give him a rouser, and no heeltaps!"
Glasses were handed around, and everybody on the platform
drank Angelo's health, while the house bellowed forth in song:
For he's a jolly good fel-low,
For he's a jolly good fel-low,
For he's a jolly good fe-el-low,
Which nobody can deny.
Tom Driscoll drank. It was his second glass, for he had drunk
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