| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: him. Vesey reached out and took the cablegram from
the m. e.'s hand. Under the protection of some special
Providence, he was always doing appalling things like
that, and coming, off unscathed.
"It's a code," said Vesey. "Anybody got the key?"
"The office has no code," said Boyd, reaching for the
message. Vesey held to it.
"Then old Callowav expects us to read it, anyhow,"
said he. "He's up a tree, or something, and he's made
this up so as to get it by, the censor. It's up to us. Gee!
I wish they had sell, me, too. Say -- we can't afford to
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: youthful distinguishes all Thoreau's knock-down blows at
current opinion. Like the posers of a child, they leave the
orthodox in a kind of speechless agony. These know the thing
is nonsense. They are sure there must be an answer, yet
somehow cannot find it. So it is with his system of economy.
He cuts through the subject on so new a plane that the
accepted arguments apply no longer; he attacks it in a new
dialect where there are no catchwords ready made for the
defender; after you have been boxing for years on a polite,
gladiatorial convention, here is an assailant who does not
scruple to hit below the belt.
|
