| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: a speedy voyage--and impatient to embrace his worthy Nephew.
SURFACE. I am astonished!--William[!] stop Mr. Stanley, if He's not
gone----
ROWLEY. O--He's out of reach--I believe.
SURFACE. Why didn't you let me know this when you came in together.--
ROWLEY. I thought you had particular--Business--but must be gone
to inform your Brother, and appoint him here to meet his Uncle.
He will be with you in a quarter of an hour----
SURFACE. So he says. Well--I am strangely overjoy'd at his coming--
never to be sure was anything so damn'd unlucky!
ROWLEY. You will be delighted to see how well He looks.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: the "Library Journal" for September, 1879, Mr. Weston Flint
gives an account of a dreadful little pest which commits
great havoc upon the cloth bindings of the New York libraries.
It is a small black-beetle or cockroach, called by scientists
"Blatta germanica" and by others the "Croton Bug." Unlike our
household pest, whose home is the kitchen, and whose bashfulness
loves secrecy and the dark hours, this misgrown flat species,
of which it would take two to make a medium-sized English
specimen, has gained in impudence what it has lost in size,
fearing neither light nor noise, neither man nor beast.
In the old English Bible of 1551, we read in Psalm xci, 5,
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