| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: premonitions of ennui.
But he saw a large crowd scrambling and pushing
excitedly in front of a billboard. Sprinting for it,
he knocked down an old woman and a child carrying
a bottle of milk, and fought his way like a demon into
the mass of spectators. Already in the inner line
stood Violet Seymour with one sleeve and two gold fill-
ings gone, a corset steel puncture and a sprained
wrist, but happy. She was looking at what there
was to see. A man was painting upon the fence:
"Eat Bricklets - They Fill Your Face."
 The Voice of the City |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: reflected from truck to water-line in the smooth gleaming sheet of
a landlocked harbour, seems, indeed, to a seaman's eye the most
perfect picture of slumbering repose. The getting of your anchor
was a noisy operation on board a merchant ship of yesterday - an
inspiring, joyous noise, as if, with the emblem of hope, the ship's
company expected to drag up out of the depths, each man all his
personal hopes into the reach of a securing hand - the hope of
home, the hope of rest, of liberty, of dissipation, of hard
pleasure, following the hard endurance of many days between sky and
water. And this noisiness, this exultation at the moment of the
ship's departure, make a tremendous contrast to the silent moments
 The Mirror of the Sea |