| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker: manifest in the searching daylight; but the more appalling
destruction which lay beneath was not visible. The rent, torn, and
dislocated stonework looked worse than before; the upheaved
foundations, the piled-up fragments of masonry, the fissures in the
torn earth--all were at the worst. The Worm's hole was still
evident, a round fissure seemingly leading down into the very bowels
of the earth. But all the horrid mass of blood and slime, of torn,
evil-smelling flesh and the sickening remnants of violent death,
were gone. Either some of the later explosions had thrown up from
the deep quantities of water which, though foul and corrupt itself,
had still some cleansing power left, or else the writhing mass which
Lair of the White Worm |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: them. It was only half past ten, and it seemed to him he had been sitting
here ten hours at the least.
After a while he threw two more large logs on the fire, and took the flask
out of his pocket. He examined it carefully by the firelight to see how
much it held: then he took a small draught, and examined it again to see
how much it had fallen; and put it back in his breast pocket.
Then Trooper Peter Halket fell to thinking.
It was not often that he thought. On patrol and sitting round camp fires
with the other men about him there was no time for it; and Peter Halket had
never been given to much thinking. He had been a careless boy at the
village school; and though, when he left, his mother paid the village
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