| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: a hopeless sort of tears, but did not speak again. The man
looked up furtively at her now and then. Whatever his own
trouble was, her distress vexed him with a momentary sting.
It was market-day. The narrow window of the jail looked down
directly on the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where
they had unloaded. He could see, too, and hear distinctly the
clink of money as it changed hands, the busy crowd of whites and
blacks shoving, pushing one another, and the chaffering and
swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more than anything
else had done, wakened him up,--made the whole real to him. He
was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: out of his mind. I wonder they didn't fling me overboard after
getting the carcass of their precious shipmate out of my fingers.
They had rather a job to separate us, I've been told. A sufficiently
fierce story to make an old judge and a respectable jury sit up a bit.
The first thing I heard when I came to myself was the maddening
howling of that endless gale, and on that the voice of the old man.
He was hanging on to my bunk, staring into my face out of his sou'wester.
"`Mr. Leggatt, you have killed a man. You can act no longer
as chief mate of this ship.'"
His care to subdue his voice made it sound monotonous.
He rested a hand on the end of the skylight to steady himself with,
The Secret Sharer |
