| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: "Oh--no! Where is Elizabeth?"
"Here am I!" cried the missing one cheerfully; and without
waiting for the ladder to be placed she slid down the face
of the clover-stack to the floor.
Henchard supporting Lucetta on one side, and Elizabeth-Jane
on the other, they went slowly along the rising road. They
had reached the top and were descending again when Lucetta,
now much recovered, recollected that she had dropped her
muff in the barn.
"I'll run back," said Elizabeth-Jane. "I don't mind it at
all, as I am not tired as you are." She thereupon hastened
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: barren soil.
But if I enjoyed the delightful benefits of naturalization in a family
where I found relations after my own heart, I had also to pay some
costs for it. Until then Monsieur de Mortsauf had more or less
restrained himself before me. I had only seen his failings in the
mass; I was now to see the full extent of their application and
discover how nobly charitable the countess had been in the account she
had given me of these daily struggles. I learned now all the angles of
her husband's intolerable nature; I heard his perpetual scolding about
nothing, complaints of evils of which not a sign existed; I saw the
inward dissatisfaction which poisoned his life, and the incessant need
The Lily of the Valley |
