| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: vague moan of her brother. This facile adaptation was at once the
symptom of perfect health and its best preservative.
A nature like Phoebe's has invariably its due influence, but is
seldom regarded with due honor. Its spiritual force, however, may
be partially estimated by the fact of her having found a place for
herself, amid circumstances so stern as those which surrounded
the mistress of the house; and also by the effect which she
produced on a character of so much more mass than her own. For
the gaunt, bony frame and limbs of Hepzibah, as compared with
the tiny lightsomeness of Phoebe's figure, were perhaps in some
fit proportion with the moral weight and substance, respectively,
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Case of the Registered Letter by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: My home called to me and I came back to it.
I kissed the earth of my own country, and I wept at my mother's
grave. I was happy again under the skies which had domed above my
childhood. For I am an honest man, beloved, and I always have been.
One day I sat at table beside the man - the Judge who condemned me,
here in G- in those terrible days. He naturally did not know me
again. I, myself, brought the conversation around to a professional
subject. I asked him if it were not possible that circumstantial
evidence could lie; if the entire past, the reputation of the
accused would not be a factor in his favour. The Judge denied it.
It was his opinion, beyond a doubt, that circumstantial evidence was
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