| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: town where we were handed the first printed news of the 'Pennsylvania's'
mournful disaster a quarter of a century ago; a town no more--
swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes; nothing left but a
fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney!
Chapter 33
Refreshments and Ethics
IN regard to Island 74, which is situated not far from the former Napoleon,
a freak of the river here has sorely perplexed the laws of men and made
them a vanity and a jest. When the State of Arkansas was chartered,
she controlled 'to the center of the river'--a most unstable line. The State
of Mississippi claimed 'to the channel'--another shifty and unstable line.
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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 Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: so unworthy, are typical of shrewdom: a paramountly feeling
nature would be objectively lost in gratitude, and silent. She
had some public instincts, it is true; she hated the Lutherans,
and longed for the church's triumph over them; but in the main
her idea of religion seems to have been that of an endless
amatory flirtation--if one may say so without irreverence--
between the devotee and the deity; and apart from helping younger
nuns to go in this direction by the inspiration of her example
and instruction, there is absolutely no human use in her, or sign
of any general human interest. Yet the spirit of her age, far
from rebuking her, exalted her as superhuman.
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