| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: monuments its fluttering trophy of white and yellow and red.
With a grim irony they recall the banners in the Invalides,
banners as appropriate perhaps over the sepulchres of tailors
and weavers as these others above the dust of armies. Why
they put things out to dry on that particular morning it was
hard to imagine. The grass was grey with drops of rain, the
headstones black with moisture. Yet, in despite of weather
and common sense, there they hung between the tombs; and
beyond them I could see through open windows into miserable
rooms where whole families were born and fed, and slept and
died. At one a girl sat singing merrily with her back to the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: what company they would be. The "girl-friend," the western city,
the immortal names, the curious errand, the idyllic faith, all made
a story as strange to me, and as beguiling, as some tale in the
Arabian Nights. Thus it was that my informant had encumbered
herself with the ponderous tome; but she hastened to assure me that
this was the first time she had brought it out. For her visit to
Mr. Paraday it had simply been a pretext. She didn't really care a
straw that he should write his name; what she did want was to look
straight into his face.
I demurred a little. "And why do you require to do that?"
"Because I just love him!" Before I could recover from the
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