| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: because she must have been on the watch for the faintest sound.
"His heart engaged. Like two hundred others, or two thousand, all
around," I mumbled.
"Altogether different. And it's no disparagement to a woman
surely. Of course her great fortune protects her in a certain
measure."
"Does it?" I faltered out and that time I really doubt whether she
heard me. Her aspect in my eyes had changed. Her purpose being
disclosed, her well-bred ease appeared sinister, her aristocratic
repose a treacherous device, her venerable graciousness a mask of
unbounded contempt for all human beings whatever. She was a
 The Arrow of Gold |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: of several houses on both sides of a street, which growing waste,
was purchased and applied to that use.
I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days
to the academy. Every room has in it one or more projectors; and
I believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.
The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and
face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several
places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same
colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting
sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials
hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement
 Gulliver's Travels |