| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: sexual arena. The cultivated Jewess no longer cuts off her hair at
her marriage. The British matron has discarded her cap and her
conscientious ugliness; and a bishop's wife at fifty has more of the
air of a _femme galante_ than an actress had at thirty-five in her
grandmother's time. But as people marry later, the facts of age and
time still inexorably condemn most parents to comparative solitude
when their children marry. This may be a privation and may be a
relief: probably in healthy circumstances it is no worse than a
salutary change of habit; but even at that it is, for the moment at
least, a wrench. For though parents and children sometimes dislike
one another, there is an experience of succor and a habit of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"--
Merely this and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my sour within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is and this mystery explore--
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;--
'Tis the wind and nothing more.
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.
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