| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: that night was about at hand. The clanging bell had
been calling for half an hour. However, this sort of
close to the day's adventures was romantic and there-
fore satisfactory. When the ferryboat with her wild
freight pushed into the stream, nobody cared sixpence
for the wasted time but the captain of the craft.
Huck was already upon his watch when the ferry-
boat's lights went glinting past the wharf. He heard
no noise on board, for the young people were as sub-
dued and still as people usually are who are nearly
tired to death. He wondered what boat it was, and
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: until the storm calls all hands to the pumps. Prophets, indeed,
were abundant before the war; but who cares for prophets while
their predictions remain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which
they tell are masked behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity?
It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion,
Will slavery never come to an end? That question, said he,
was asked fifty years ago, and it has been answered by fifty years
of unprecedented prosperity. Spite of the eloquence of the earnest
Abolitionists,--poured out against slavery during thirty years,--
even they must confess, that, in all the probabilities of the case,
that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond
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