| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: covered with a thick armour of scales, and its neck, as flexible as a
swan's, rises thirty feet above the waves.
Those huge creatures attacked each other with the greatest animosity.
They heaved around them liquid mountains, which rolled even to our
raft and rocked it perilously. Twenty times we were near capsizing.
Hissings of prodigious force are heard. The two beasts are fast
locked together; I cannot distinguish the one from the other. The
probable rage of the conqueror inspires us with intense fear.
One hour, two hours, pass away. The struggle continues with unabated
ferocity. The combatants alternately approach and recede from our
raft. We remain motionless, ready to fire. Suddenly the ichthyosaurus
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: I did not want any of them, but I wanted some one for mine, for me. I
could not help it. I wanted a finer life.
"Only one day something made me happy. A nurse came to the store with a
little girl belonging to one of our clerks. While the maid went into the
office to give a message to its father, the little child stood looking at
me. Presently she came close to me and peeped up into my face.
"'Nice curls, pretty curls,' she said; 'I like curls.'
"She felt my hair all over, with her little hands. When I put out my arm
she let me take her and sit her on my knee. She kissed me with her soft
mouth. We were happy till the nurse-girl came and shook her, and asked her
if she was not ashamed to sit on the knee of that strange man. But I do
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