| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: the Ohio and the Missouri and heard the legends of Dubuque and of
Wenona's Cliff--still thinking more of the future than of the
past or present--I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a
different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to be
laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the
river; and I felt that THIS WAS THE HEROIC AGE ITSELF, though we
know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest
of men.
The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and
what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the
preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: without any precise recollection of anything that had happened?
Or was her memory as stagnant as water without any current? But
however this may have been, for fifteen years she remained thus
inert and secluded.
"The war broke out, and in the beginning of December the Germans
came to Cormeil. I can remember it as if it were but yesterday.
It was freezing hard enough to split the stones, and I myself was
lying back in an armchair, being unable to move on account of the
gout, when I heard their heavy and regular tread, and could see
them pass from my window.
"They defiled past interminably, with that peculiar motion of a
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