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: always kept free from, holding the belief that the
well-known and popular sentiment is not properly a
matter for publication, but something to be privately
handled by the alienists and florists. But the editors
had told him that they wanted love stories, because
they said the women read them.
Now, the editors are wrong about that, of course.
Women do not read the love stories in the magazines.
They read the poker-game stories and the recipes
for cucumber lotion. The love stories are read by
fat cigar drummers and little ten-year-old girls. I
 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 Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: But, strangely enough--(I thought of it only afterwards)--
I believe that he was not a little disconcerted by the reverse
side of that weird situation, by something in me that reminded
him of the man he was seeking--suggested a mysterious similitude
to the young fellow he had distrusted and disliked from the first.
However that might have been, the silence was not very prolonged.
He took another oblique step.
"I reckon I had no more than a two-mile pull to your ship.
Not a bit more."
"And quite enough, too, in this awful heat," I said.
Another pause full of mistrust followed. Necessity, they say, is mother
 The Secret Sharer |