| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: "You are making heaven pretty comfortable in one way, but you are
playing the mischief with it in another."
"How d'you mean?"
"Well," I says, "take a young mother that's lost her child, and - "
"Sh!" he says. "Look!"
It was a woman. Middle-aged, and had grizzled hair. She was
walking slow, and her head was bent down, and her wings hanging
limp and droopy; and she looked ever so tired, and was crying, poor
thing! She passed along by, with her head down, that way, and the
tears running down her face, and didn't see us. Then Sandy said,
low and gentle, and full of pity:
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: was never anything tangible left from the F.C.T.C. It flourished
no longer than roses live, and unlike the roses it blossomed in
the dead of winter, emitted a sort of faint perfume of adventure
and died before spring set in. But indubitably it was a company,
it had even a house-flag, all white with the letters F.C.T.C.
artfully tangled up in a complicated monogram. We flew it at our
main-mast head, and now I have come to the conclusion that it was
the only flag of its kind in existence. All the same we on
board, for many days, had the impression of being a unit of a
large fleet with fortnightly departures for Montreal and Quebec
as advertised in pamphlets and prospectuses which came aboard in
 Some Reminiscences |