| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: me to get him out. I shall not sell my property in the Funds."
Hearing this last fragment of the sentence Ursula experienced the
first and only pain which so far had ever touched her. She laid her
head against the blind to steady herself.
"Good God, what is the matter with her?" thought the old doctor. "She
has no color; such an emotion after dinner might kill her."
He went to her with open arms, and she fell into them almost fainting.
"Adieu, Monsieur," he said to the notary, "please leave us."
He carried his child to an immense Louis XV. sofa which was in his
study, looked for a phial of hartshorn among his remedies, and made
her inhale it.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: ten-cent cigar, and stood on the Main Street jingling the three
pennies in my pocket--dead broke. A man in Texas with only three cents
in his pocket is no better off than a man that has no money and owes
two cents.
"One of luck's favourite tricks is to soak a man for his last dollar
so quick that he don't have time to look it. There I was in a swell
St. Louis tailor-made, blue-and-green plaid suit, and an eighteen-
carat sulphate-of-copper scarf-pin, with no hope in sight except the
two great Texas industries, the cotton fields and grading new
railroads. I never picked cotton, and I never cottoned to a pick, so
the outlook had ultramarine edges.
Heart of the West |
