| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: Stay here and pray to God to make you, and me too, wiser men."
And so Amyas departed. He had come out stern and proud; but he
came back again like a little child.
Three days after Parracombe was dead. Once in camp he seemed
unable to eat or move, and having received absolution and communion
from good Sir John, faded away without disease or pain, "babbling
of green fields," and murmuring the name of his lost Indian bride.
Amyas, too, sought ghostly council of Sir John, and told him all
which had passed through his mind.
"It was indeed a temptation of Diabolus," said that simple sage;
"for he is by his very name the divider who sets man against man,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: He was submerged in the vast impersonal
grayness about him, and at intervals the sidelong
roll of the boat measured off time like the ticking
of a clock. He felt released from everything
that troubled and perplexed him. It was as if
he had tricked and outwitted torturing memories,
had actually managed to get on board without them.
He thought of nothing at all. If his mind now
and again picked a face out of the grayness,
it was Lucius Wilson's, or the face of an old schoolmate,
forgotten for years; or it was the slim outline of a
Alexander's Bridge |
