| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: cost. "I was with my father, after I left school to go out there.
It was delightful being with him - we're alone together in the
world, he and I - but there was none of the society I like best.
One never heard of a picture - never of a book, except bad ones."
"Never of a picture? Why, wasn't all life a picture?"
She looked over the delightful place where they sat. "Nothing to
compare to this. I adore England!" she cried.
It fairly stirred in him the sacred chord. "Ah of course I don't
deny that we must do something with her, poor old dear, yet."
"She hasn't been touched, really," said the girl.
"Did Mr. St. George say that?"
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: because it is exercised on nothings. Yet if he envies a fool who is
elegantly dressed, he is also capable of enthusiasm over talent, and
of genuine admiration for genius. Such defects as these, when they
have no root in the heart, prove only the exuberance of sap,--the
richness of the youthful imagination. That a lad of nineteen, an only
child, kept severely at home by poverty, adored by a mother who put
upon herself all privations for his sake, should be moved to envy by a
young man of twenty-two in a frogged surtout-coat silk-lined, a waist-
coat of fancy cashmere, and a cravat slipped through a ring of the
worse taste, is nothing more than a peccadillo committed in all ranks
of social life by inferiors who envy those that seem beyond them. Men
|