| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: going near his native place, where the odious lawsuit was still
going on, proceeded straight to Warsaw and entered the army of
the newly constituted Polish kingdom under the sceptre of
Alexander I., Autocrat of all the Russias.
This kingdom, created by the Vienna Congress as an acknowledgment
to a nation of its former independent existence, included only
the central provinces of the old Polish patrimony. A brother of
the Emperor, the Grand Duke Constantine (Pavlovitch), its Viceroy
and Commander-in-Chief, married morganatically to a Polish lady
to whom he was fiercely attached, extended this affection to what
he called "My Poles" in a capricious and savage manner. Sallow
Some Reminiscences |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: mocking.
"I know it is foolish. Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring
down," she said. "But we are cursed. Waldo, born cursed from the time our
mothers bring us into the world till the shrouds are put on us. Do not
look at me as though I were talking nonsense. Everything has two sides--
the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn."
"I am not laughing," said the boy, sedately enough; "but what curses you?"
He thought she would not reply to him, she waited so long.
"It is not what is done to us, but what is made of us," she said at last,
"that wrongs us. No man can be really injured but by what modifies
himself. We all enter the world little plastic beings, with so much
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