| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: wild, were now distorted by pain; his hands and scanty garments
stained with his own blood, and those of others, which no kind
hand had wiped away, although the wound in his side had been
secured by a bandage.
"Are you," he said, raising his head painfully towards the couch
where lay stretched his late antagonist, "he whom men call the
Knight of Ardenvohr?"
"The same," answered Sir Duncan,--"what would you with one whose
hours are now numbered?"
"My hours are reduced to minutes," said the outlaw; "the more
grace, if I bestow them in the service of one, whose hand has
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: the practically featureless, appearances in the great procession;
and this perhaps all the more from the very fact of the connexion
(only recognised outside indeed) to which she had lent herself with
ridiculous inconsequence. She recognised the others the less
because she had at last so unreservedly, so irredeemably,
recognised Mr. Mudge. However that might be, she was a little
ashamed of having to admit to herself that Mr. Mudge's removal to a
higher sphere--to a more commanding position, that is, though to a
much lower neighbourhood--would have been described still better as
a luxury than as the mere simplification, the corrected
awkwardness, that she contented herself with calling it. He had at
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