| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: of the broken china vase, and was putting the jonquils in their
place with touches that lingered down their smooth stems and blade-
like leaves.
"Ain't they pretty?" she kept repeating as she gathered the
flowers into a starry circle. "Seems as if spring was really here,
don't it?"
Ann Eliza remembered that it was Mr. Ramy's evening.
When he came, the Teutonic eye for anything that blooms made
him turn at once to the jonquils.
"Ain't dey pretty?" he said. "Seems like as if de spring was
really here."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: Algeria in the year of grace 1830. And, indeed, I had seen and
examined one of the buttons of his old brown, patched coat, the
only brass button of the miscellaneous lot, flat and thin, with
the words Equipages de ligne engraved on it. That sort of
button, I believe, went out with the last of the French Bourbons.
"I preserved it from the time of my navy service," he explained,
nodding rapidly his frail, vulture-like head. It was not very
likely that he had picked up that relic in the street. He looked
certainly old enough to have fought at Trafalgar--or, at any
rate, to have played his little part there as a powder monkey.
Shortly after we had been introduced he had informed me in a
A Personal Record |
