| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: when a swarm of slave traders, and agents for slave
traders, flocked into jail to look at us, and to as-
certain if we were for sale. Such a set of beings I
never saw before! I felt myself surrounded by so
many fiends from perdition. A band of pirates never
looked more like their father, the devil. They
laughed and grinned over us, saying, "Ah, my boys!
we have got you, haven't we?" And after taunting
us in various ways, they one by one went into an
examination of us, with intent to ascertain our value.
They would impudently ask us if we would not like
 The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: in a reasonable tone, `why shouldn't we get the rivets?'
Why not, indeed! I did not know of any reason why we shouldn't.
`They'll come in three weeks,' I said confidently.
"But they didn't. Instead of rivets there came an invasion,
an infliction, a visitation. It came in sections during
the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying
a white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from
that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims.
A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heels
of the donkey; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes, white cases,
brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air
 Heart of Darkness |