| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: names all written in the same hand, rather a big and rather a
bad one: Trent, Brown, Hardy, and (instead of Ah Sing) Jos.
Amalu.
"Pinkerton," said I, suddenly, "have you that _Occidental_ in
your pocket?"
"Never left me," said Pinkerton, producing the paper.
I turned to the account of the wreck. "Here," said I; "here's the
name. 'Elias Goddedaal, mate.' Why do we never come across
Elias Goddedaal?"
"That's so," said Jim. "Was he with the rest in that saloon
when you saw them?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: still keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived:
the ESSAIS of Montaigne. That temperate and genial picture
of life is a great gift to place in the hands of persons of
to-day; they will find in these smiling pages a magazine of
heroism and wisdom, all of an antique strain; they will have
their 'linen decencies' and excited orthodoxies fluttered,
and will (if they have any gift of reading) perceive that
these have not been fluttered without some excuse and ground
of reason; and (again if they have any gift of reading) they
will end by seeing that this old gentleman was in a dozen
ways a finer fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler view
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