| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: out gamblers, temporarily unlucky speculators - VIEUX AMIS - old
friends, as she used to explain apologetically, with a shrug of her
fine shoulders.
Whether Don Carlos was one of the "old friends," too, it's hard to
say. More unlikely things have been heard of in smoking-rooms.
All I know is that one evening, entering incautiously the salon of
the little house just after the news of a considerable Carlist
success had reached the faithful, I was seized round the neck and
waist and whirled recklessly three times round the room, to the
crash of upsetting furniture and the humming of a valse tune in a
warm contralto voice.
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: to the Yellowstone." He was laudatory, extremely laudatory. He found
opportunities to remark that Dr. Angus was a benefactor to humanity, Maxwell
and Howard Littlefield profound scholars, Charles McKelvey an inspiration to
ambitious youth, and Mrs. McKelvey an adornment to the social circles of
Zenith, Washington, New York, Paris, and numbers of other places.
But he could not stir them. It was a dinner without a soul. For no reason
that was clear to Babbitt, heaviness was over them and they spoke laboriously
and unwillingly.
He concentrated on Lucille McKelvey, carefully not looking at her blanched
lovely shoulder and the tawny silken bared which supported her frock.
"I suppose you'll be going to Europe pretty soon again, won't you?" he
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