| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: You can't go yet," she said imploringly. "You can't possibly go away
feeling like that." And she stared up at him frowning, biting her lip.
"Oh, that's all right," said Reggie, giving himself a shake. "I'll...
I'll--" And he waved his hand as much to say "get over it."
"But this is awful," said Anne. She clasped her hands and stood in front
of him. "Surely you do see how fatal it would be for us to marry, don't
you?"
"Oh, quite, quite," said Reggie, looking at her with haggard eyes.
"How wrong, how wicked, feeling as I do. I mean, it's all very well for
Mr. and Mrs. Dove. But imagine that in real life--imagine it!"
"Oh, absolutely," said Reggie, and he started to walk on. But again Anne
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: sheath of varied and even incompatible possibilities, a
palimpsest of inherited dispositions. It was the habit of many
writers in the early twentieth century to speak of competition
and the narrow, private life of trade and saving and suspicious
isolation as though such things were in some exceptional way
proper to the human constitution, and as though openness of mind
and a preference for achievement over possession were abnormal
and rather unsubstantial qualities. How wrong that was the
history of the decades immediately following the establishment of
the world republic witnesses. Once the world was released from
the hardening insecurities of a needless struggle for life that
The Last War: A World Set Free |
