| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: depict the manners of the steerage. We were in truth very
innocently, cheerfully, and sensibly engaged, and there was no shadow
of excuse for the swaying elegant superiority with which these
damsels passed among us, or for the stiff and waggish glances of
their squire. Not a word was said; only when they were gone Mackay
sullenly damned their impudence under his breath; but we were all
conscious of an icy influence and a dead break in the course of our
enjoyment.
STEERAGE TYPES
We had a fellow on board, an Irish-American, for all the world like a
beggar in a print by Callot; one-eyed, with great, splay crow's-feet
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: In this letter there was a little note enclosed for Rosa.
Van Baerle's nurse had received the letter in the following
way.
Leaving Dort, Mynheer Isaac Boxtel had abandoned, not only
his house, his servants, his observatory, and his telescope,
but also his pigeons.
The servant, having been left without wages, first lived on
his little savings, and then on his master's pigeons.
Seeing this, the pigeons emigrated from the roof of Isaac
Boxtel to that of Cornelius van Baerle.
The nurse was a kind-hearted woman, who could not live
The Black Tulip |
