| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: when I say that I haven't had a scrimmage with me hands since I
came here. The only idea this forsaken country has of exchanging
compliments is with a knife in the dark." He shook his flaming
head regretfully at the deplorably lost condition of a country
where the shillalah was unknown as a social institution.
"If I wasn't tied up with this Valdez bunch I'd get out
to-morrow, and sometimes I have half a mind to pull out anyhow.
If you've never been associated, me lad, with half a dozen most
divilishly polite senors, each one of them watching the others
out of the corner of his slant eyes for fear they are going to
betray him or assassinate him first, you'll never know the joys
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: hand, and stopped to consider our pitiful advance.
'Your donkey,' says he, 'is very old?'
I told him, I believed not.
Then, he supposed, we had come far.
I told him, we had but newly left Monastier.
'ET VOUS MARCHEZ COMME CA!' cried he; and, throwing back his head,
he laughed long and heartily. I watched him, half prepared to feel
offended, until he had satisfied his mirth; and then, 'You must
have no pity on these animals,' said he; and, plucking a switch out
of a thicket, he began to lace Modestine about the stern-works,
uttering a cry. The rogue pricked up her ears and broke into a
|
