| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: again--aloud; but just a few seconds before he went to meet his
Maker, his lips moved in a faint whisper; and as I leaned closer
to catch his words, what do you suppose I heard? "Now--I--lay
me--down--to--sleep" That was all; Benson was dead. We threw his
body overboard.
The wind of that night brought on some pretty rough weather with
a lot of black clouds which persisted for several days. We didn't
know what course we had been holding, and there was no way of
finding out, as we could no longer trust the compass, not knowing
what Benson had done to it. The long and the short of it was that
we cruised about aimlessly until the sun came out again. I'll never
The Land that Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. How, or why, or when,
was this lymphatic bagman martyred? We concluded at once it was on
some religious question, and brushed up our memories of the
Inquisition, which were principally drawn from Poe's horrid story,
and the sermon in TRISTRAM SHANDY, I believe.
On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into the
question; for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathising
deputation at our departure, we found the hero up before us. He
was breaking his fast on white wine and raw onions, in order to
keep up the character of martyr, I conclude. We had a long
conversation, and made out what we wanted in spite of his reserve.
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