| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: of his murmured reply intended only for Almayer's ear.
"It was fate. Look at your feet, white man. I can see a ring on
those torn fingers which I know well."
Saying this, Babalatchi stepped carelessly forward, putting his
foot as if accidentally on the hand of the corpse and pressing it
into the soft mud. He swung his staff menacingly towards the
crowd, which fell back a little.
"Go away," he said sternly, "and send your women to their cooking
fires, which they ought not to have left to run after a dead
stranger. This is men's work here. I take him now in the name
of the Rajah. Let no man remain here but Tuan Almayer's slaves.
Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: And now these two filthy pieces drive their nobler fellows from the
stage, where indeed I cannot have my lady physician presented at all,
she being too honest a woman for the taste of the town. Wherefore I
humbly beg your Majesty to give order that a theatre be endowed out of
the public revenue for the playing of those pieces of mine which no
merchant will touch, seeing that his gain is so much greater with the
worse than with the better. Thereby you shall also encourage other
men to undertake the writing of plays who do now despise it and leave
it wholly to those whose counsels will work little good to your realm.
For this writing of plays is a great matter, forming as it does the
minds and affections of men in such sort that whatsoever they see done
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