| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: as you see, is to drop down from the moon."
"No, I don't drop from the moon," said Bernard, laughing.
"I drop from--Siena!" He offered his hand to Miss Vivian,
who for an appreciable instant hesitated to extend her own.
Then she returned his salutation, without any response to his
allusion to Siena.
She declined to take a seat, and said she was tired and preferred
to go home. With this suggestion her mother immediately complied,
and the two ladies appealed to the indulgence of little Miss Evers,
who was obliged to renounce the society of Captain Lovelock.
She enjoyed this luxury, however, on the way to Mrs. Vivian's lodgings,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: We sing not to deaf ears; no word of ours
But the woods echo it. What groves or lawns
Held you, ye Dryad-maidens, when for love-
Love all unworthy of a loss so dear-
Gallus lay dying? for neither did the slopes
Of Pindus or Parnassus stay you then,
No, nor Aonian Aganippe. Him
Even the laurels and the tamarisks wept;
For him, outstretched beneath a lonely rock,
Wept pine-clad Maenalus, and the flinty crags
Of cold Lycaeus. The sheep too stood around-
|
