| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: attribute unequally distributed among material objects and abstract
ideas. It is a virtue which belongs to the mind and moral character
of certain persons. It is a reciprocal human quality; active as
well as passive; a power of bestowing and receiving.
An amiable person is one who has a capacity for loving and being
loved. An affable person is one who is ready to speak and to be
spoken to,--as, for example, Milton's "affable archangel" Raphael;
though it must be confessed that he laid the chief emphasis on the
active side of his affability. A "clubable" person (to use a word
which Dr. Samuel Johnson invented but did not put into his
dictionary) is one who is fit for the familiar give and take of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: for myself. He offered me this, and he offered me that. At last I said,
'Well, just to oblige you, I give you the vatje and you give me the girl!'
And so he did. Most people wouldn't have fancied a nigger girl who'd had
two nigger children, but I didn't mind; it's all the same to me. And I
tell you she worked. She made a garden, and she and the other girl worked
in it; I tell you I didn't need to buy a sixpence of food for them in six
months, and I used to sell green mealies and pumpkins to all the fellows
about. There weren't many flies on her, I tell you. She picked up English
quicker than I picked up her lingo, and took to wearing a dress and shawl."
The stranger still sat motionless, looking into the fire.
Peter Halket reseated himself more comfortably before the fire. "Well, I
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