| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: mother would be before starting." I expressed to her hereupon my
sense of her extraordinary merit and also that of the
inconceivability of Flora's fancying herself still in a situation
not to jump at the chance of marrying a man like Dawling. "She
says he's too ugly; she says he's too dreary; she says in fact he's
'nobody,'" Mrs. Meldrum pursued. "She says above all that he's not
'her own sort.' She doesn't deny that he's good, but she finds him
impossibly ridiculous. He's quite the last person she would ever
dream of." I was almost disposed on hearing this to protest that
if the girl had so little proper feeling her noble suitor had
perhaps served her right; but after a while my curiosity as to just
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: almost his thoughts, to those of any rank, character, or nation;
and in this way he diverted attention from the Prince, and
sometimes gained admission for the pair into strange societies.
The civil authorities were never taken into the secret of these
adventures; the imperturbable courage of the one and the ready
invention and chivalrous devotion of the other had brought them
through a score of dangerous passes; and they grew in confidence as
time went on.
One evening in March they were driven by a sharp fall of sleet into
an Oyster Bar in the immediate neighbourhood of Leicester Square.
Colonel Geraldine was dressed and painted to represent a person
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