| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: life, which was not without its pleasantness for a time.
Wherever Jude heard of free-stone work to be done, thither he went,
choosing by preference places remote from his old haunts and Sue's.
He laboured at a job, long or briefly, till it was finished;
and then moved on.
Two whole years and a half passed thus. Sometimes he might have been
found shaping the mullions of a country mansion, sometimes setting
the parapet of a town-hall, sometimes ashlaring an hotel at Sandbourne,
sometimes a museum at Casterbridge, sometimes as far down as Exonbury,
sometimes at Stoke-Barehills. Later still he was at Kennetbridge,
a thriving town not more than a dozen miles south of Marygreen,
Jude the Obscure |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: decline effectively, the company of his servant or of a nurse. He
knew now perfectly what these good people thought; they had
discovered his clandestine connexion, the magnet that had drawn him
for so many years, and doubtless attached a significance of their
own to the odd words they had repeated to him. The nameless lady
was the clandestine connexion - a fact nothing could have made
clearer than his indecent haste to rejoin her. He sank on his
knees before his altar while his head fell over on his hands. His
weakness, his life's weariness overtook him. It seemed to him he
had come for the great surrender. At first he asked himself how he
should get away; then, with the failing belief in the power, the
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