| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: fortune, when the impropriety has shifted to the other side,
and he is "ashamed to be seen in a hackney." Pepys talked
about being "a Quaker or some very melancholy thing;" for my
part, I can imagine nothing so melancholy, because nothing
half so silly, as to be concerned about such problems. But
so respectability and the duties of society haunt and burden
their poor devotees; and what seems at first the very
primrose path of life, proves difficult and thorny like the
rest. And the time comes to Pepys, as to all the merely
respectable, when he must not only order his pleasures, but
even clip his virtuous movements, to the public pattern 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 Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: said one word for woman but he said two for man, and three for the whole
human race."
She watched the bird pecking up the last yellow grains; but Waldo looked
only at her.
When she spoke again it was very measuredly.
"They bring weighty arguments against us when we ask for the perfect
freedom of women," she said; "but, when you come to the objections, they
are like pumpkin devils with candles inside, hollow, and can't bite. They
say that women do not wish for the sphere and freedom we ask for them, and
would not use it!
"If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar and will not leave
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