| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: transformation it is done at once, and the halcyon days of
publick tranquillity return: For neither the military temper nor
discipline can taint the soft sex for a whole age to come:
Bellaque matribus invisa, War odious to mothers, will not grow
immediately palatable in their paternal state.
Nor will the influence of this transformation be less in family
tranquillity, than it is in national. Great faults will be
amended, and frailties forgiven, on both sides. A wife who has
been disturb'd with late hours, and choak'd with the hautgout of
a sot, will remember her sufferings, and avoid the temptations;
and will, for the same reason, indulge her mate in his female
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: position of a defendant of the pirates, protesting that the
wickedness of the accused was enormously exaggerated. He declared
that he knew some of the freebooters very well and that at the
most they were poor, misdirected wretches who had, by easy
gradation, slid into their present evil ways, from having been
tempted by the government authorities to enter into privateering
in the days of the late war. He conceded that Captain Scarfield
had done many cruel and wicked deeds, but he averred that he had
also performed many kind and benevolent actions. The world made
no note of these latter, but took care only to condemn the evil
that had been done. He acknowledged that it was true that the
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
