| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: white-winged gulls over a moonlit ocean; and less frequent motor-cars-
-sustaining the comparison--hissed through the foaming waves like
submarine boats on their jocund, perilous journeys.
Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on her way. She looked
up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the
streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray,
drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so like the
wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such
as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her.
A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by his eye and
weight.
 Options |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: female is bound organically in two ways to the males of her society:
collaterally they are her companions and the co-progenitors with her of the
race; but she is also the mother of the males of each succeeding
generation, bearing, shaping, and impressing her personality upon them.
The males and females of each human society resemble two oxen tethered to
one yoke: for a moment one may move slightly forward and the other remain
stationary; but they can never move farther from each other than the length
of the yoke that binds them; and they must ultimately remain stationary or
move forward together. That which the women of one generation are mentally
or physically, that by inheritance and education the males of the next tend
to be: there can be no movement or change in one sex which will not
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