| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: Twickenham or Richmond, sometimes to linger
about the place for a while and to ponder by
Lord Elgin's marbles upon the lastingness of
some things, or, in the mummy room, upon
the awful brevity of others. Since then
Bartley had always thought of the British
Museum as the ultimate repository of mortality,
where all the dead things in the world were
assembled to make one's hour of youth the
more precious. One trembled lest before he
got out it might somehow escape him, lest he
Alexander's Bridge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: November 22, 1993, on the day of the 30th anniversary
of his assassination.
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, given November 19, 1863
on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
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Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
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