| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: The production of these their first tools was hailed as a triumph. It was
indeed a valuable result of their labor, and a very opportune one. They set
out.
Cyrus Harding proposed that they should return to the western shore of
the lake, where the day before he had noticed the clayey ground of which he
possessed a specimen. They therefore followed the bank of the Mercy,
traversed Prospect Heights, and alter a walk of five miles or more they
reached a glade, situated two hundred feet from Lake Grant.
On the way Herbert had discovered a tree, the branches of which the
Indians of South America employ for making their bows. It was the crejimba,
of the palm family, which does not bear edible fruit. Long straight
The Mysterious Island |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: notice that the elaborate ceremonies by which he sought to please
her did but aggravate the strange malady from which she suffered.
When she died he was, for a time, like one bereft of reason.
Indeed, there is no doubt but that he would have formally abdicated
and retired to the great Trappist monastery at Granada, of which he
was already titular Prior, had he not been afraid to leave the
little Infanta at the mercy of his brother, whose cruelty, even in
Spain, was notorious, and who was suspected by many of having
caused the Queen's death by means of a pair of poisoned gloves that
he had presented to her on the occasion of her visiting his castle
in Aragon. Even after the expiration of the three years of public
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