| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: the measures which she took for regaining control of her husband's
money, were they not the result of a mother's love, and a desire to
repair the wrongs she had done her children? And again, it may be,
like many a woman who has experienced the storm of lawless love, she
felt a longing to lead a virtuous life again. Perhaps she only learned
the worth of that life when she came to reap the woeful harvest sown
by her errors.
"Every time that little Ernest came out of his father's room, she put
him through a searching examination as to all that his father had done
or said. The boy willingly complied with his mother's wishes, and told
her even more than she asked in her anxious affection, as he thought.
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: declined to let him have more than a second thousand, his talk
became incoherent, concerning itself chiefly with the price of dogs
and dog-food, and such things as snowshoes and moccasins and winter
trails. They let him have fifteen hundred, which was more than the
cottage warranted, and breathed easier when he scrawled his
signature and passed out the door.
Two weeks later he went over Chilkoot with three dog sleds of five
dogs each. One team he drove, the two Indians with him driving the
others. At Lake Marsh they broke out the cache and loaded up. But
there was no trail. He was the first in over the ice, and to him
fell the task of packing the snow and hammering away through the
|
