| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: well-shod feet the dryer spots upon the pavements.
The restless doors of saloons, clashing to and fro, disclosed
animated rows of men before bars and hurrying barkeepers.
A concert hall gave to the street faint sounds of swift,
machine-like music, as if a group of phantom musicians were
hastening.
A tall young man, smoking a cigarette with a sublime air,
strolled near the girl. He had on evening dress, a moustache, a
chrysanthemum, and a look of ennui, all of which he kept carefully
under his eye. Seeing the girl walk on as if such a young man as
he was not in existence, he looked back transfixed with interest.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: hand at the moment, together with other matters that were in
progress. The artist, meanwhile, could scarcely lift his head.
There was nothing so antipodal to his nature as this man's cold,
unimaginative sagacity, by contact with which everything was
converted into a dream except the densest matter of the physical
world. Owen groaned in spirit and prayed fervently to be
delivered from him.
"But what is this?" cried Peter Hovenden abruptly, taking up a
dusty bell glass, beneath which appeared a mechanical something,
as delicate and minute as the system of a butterfly's anatomy.
"What have we here? Owen! Owen! there is witchcraft in these
Mosses From An Old Manse |
