| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: Lambert had assimilated the contents of all the books in his uncle's
library that were worth reading. The process of absorbing ideas by
means of reading had become in him a very strange phenomenon. His eye
took in six or seven lines at once, and his mind grasped the sense
with a swiftness as remarkable as that of his eye; sometimes even one
word in a sentence was enough to enable him to seize the gist of the
matter.
His memory was prodigious. He remembered with equal exactitude the
ideas he had derived from reading, and those which had occurred to him
in the course of meditation or conversation. Indeed, he had every form
of memory--for places, for names, for words, things, and faces. He not
Louis Lambert |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: Vaimaunga was gone into the bush, the very gaoler setting free his
prisoners and joining them in their escape. Hear the words of the
chiefs in the 23rd article of their complaint: "Some of the chiefs
fled to the bush from fear of being reported, fear of German men-
of-war, constantly being accused, etc., and Brandeis commanded that
they were to be shot on sight. This act was carried out by
Brandeis on the 31st day of August, 1888. After this we evaded
these laws; we could not stand them; our patience was worn out with
the constant wickedness of Tamasese and Brandeis. We were tired
out and could stand no longer the acts of these two men."
So through an ill-timed skirmish, two severed heads, and a dead
|
