| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass:
CHAPTER VII
I lived in Master Hugh's family about seven years.
During this time, I succeeded in learning to read and
write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled to re-
sort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher.
My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: among them, and there were no less than six kippersol trees scattered here
and there among the broken kopjes. In the rocks there were hundreds of
homes for the conies, and from the crevices wild asparagus hung down. She
ran to the river, bathed in the clear cold water, and tossed it over her
head. She sang aloud. All the songs she knew were sad, so she could not
sing them now, she was glad, she was so free; but she sang the notes
without the words, as the cock-o-veets do. Singing and jumping all the
way, she went back, and took a sharp stone, and cut at the root of a
kippersol, and got out a large piece, as long as her arm, and sat to chew
it. Two conies came out on the rock above her head and peeped at her. She
held them out a piece, but they did not want it, and ran away.
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