The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: as cheerfully and willingly for their young drivers as I work for Jerry.
It may be hard work sometimes, but a friend's hand and voice make it easy.
There was a young coster-boy who came up our street with greens and potatoes;
he had an old pony, not very handsome, but the cheerfullest
and pluckiest little thing I ever saw, and to see how fond those two were
of each other was a treat. The pony followed his master like a dog,
and when he got into his cart would trot off without a whip or a word,
and rattle down the street as merrily as if he had come out of
the queen's stables. Jerry liked the boy, and called him "Prince Charlie",
for he said he would make a king of drivers some day.
There was an old man, too, who used to come up our street with
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: them has either perished wholly, or is only doubtfully recovered by the
efforts of modern philology. The verses have been repeated as a chant or
part of a ritual, but they have had no relation to ordinary life or speech.
(2) The invention of writing again is commonly attributed to a particular
epoch, and we are apt to think that such an inestimable gift would have
immediately been diffused over a whole country. But it may have taken a
long time to perfect the art of writing, and another long period may have
elapsed before it came into common use. Its influence on language has been
increased ten, twenty or one hundred fold by the invention of printing.
Before the growth of poetry or the invention of writing, languages were
only dialects. So they continued to be in parts of the country in which
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