| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: The smiling chemist tapped his brow.
'Rob,' he replied, 'this throbbing brain
Still worked and hankered after gain.
By day and night, to work my will,
It pounded like a powder mill;
And marking how the world went round
A theory of theft it found.
Here is the key to right and wrong:
STEAL LITTLE, BUT STEAL ALL DAY LONG;
And this invaluable plan
Marks what is called the Honest Man.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: week to her house, where she had friends enough to make a card-table;
she could not leave the Abbe Birotteau; Mademoiselle Salomon had not
missed a single evening that week; she was devoted to friends; and--et
cetera, et cetera. Her speech was all the more humbly haughty and
softly persuasive because Mademoiselle Salomon de Villenoix belonged
to the most aristocatic society in Tours. For though Mademoiselle
Salomon came to Mademoiselle Gamard's house solely out of friendship
for the vicar, the old maid triumphed in receiving her, and saw that,
thanks to Birotteau, she was on the point of succeeding in her great
desire to form a circle as numerous and as agreeable as those of
Madame de Listomere, Mademoiselle Merlin de la Blottiere, and other
|
