| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: for not wasting my time, with such an evident interest in my case
that I was quite surprised; then, rising from his chair, he said:
"Have you a ship in view after you have passed?"
I answered that I had nothing whatever in view.
He shook hands with me, and pronounced the memorable words:
"If you happen to be in want of employment, remember that as long
as I have a ship you have a ship, too."
In the way of compliment there is nothing to beat this from a
ship's captain to his second mate at the end of a voyage, when the
work is over and the subordinate is done with. And there is a
pathos in that memory, for the poor fellow never went to sea again
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: Michel Eyraud, one of the assassins of the bailiff Gouffe.
On June 16 Eyraud was delivered over to the French police. He
reached France on the 20th, and on July 1 made his first
appearance before the examining magistrate.
It will be well at this point in the narrative to describe how
Eyraud and Gabrielle Bompard came to be associated together in
crime. Gabrielle Bompard was twenty-two years of age at the time
of her arrest, the fourth child of a merchant of Lille, a strong,
hardworking, respectable man. Her mother, a delicate woman, had
died of lung disease when Gabrielle was thirteen. Even as a
child lying and vicious, thinking only of men and clothes,
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
