| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: compared to any fish of greatest value and largest size. They be usually
full of eggs or spawn, all the months of summer; for they breed often,
as 'tis observed mice and many of the smaller four-footed creatures of
the earth do and as those, so these come quickly to their full growth and
perfection. And it is needful that they breed both often and numerously;
for they be, besides other accidents of ruin, both a prey and baits for
other fish. And first I shall tell you of the Minnow or Penk.
The MINNOW hath, when he is in perfect season, and not sick, which
is only presently after spawning, a kind of dappled or waved colour,
like to a panther, on its sides, inclining to a greenish or sky-colour; his
belly being milk white; and his back almost black or blackish. He is a
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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 Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: days of her childhood, when he always used to spend his business
vacations at her mother's home in Maine. He had possessed for
her that almost hypnotic influence which young men sometimes
exert upon little girls. It was a sort of phantom love affair,
subjective and fanciful, a precocity of instinct, like that
tender and maternal concern which some little girls feel for
their dolls. Yet this childish infatuation is capable of all the
depressions and exaltations of love itself, it has its bitter
jealousies, cruel disappointments, its exacting caprices.
Summer after summer she had awaited his coming and wept at his
departure, indifferent to the gayer young men who had called her
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
