| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--
all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war,
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--
seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation.
Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather
than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather
than let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew
Second Inaugural Address |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: pompously.
"Oh, pardon me, monsieur," he replied, snatching it off; "I forgot
myself."
Then he slipped into the thickest of the crowd and disappeared.
A few seconds after the irruption of this youth the same door gave
access to a man around whose powerful, seamed face was the collar of a
white beard, which, combined with a thick shock of hair, also white
but slightly reddish in tone and falling almost to his shoulders, gave
him very much the air of an old Conventional, or a Bernardin de Saint-
Pierre who had had the small-pox. His face and his hair placed him in
the sixties, but his robust figure, the energetic decision of his
|
