| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: more eager to penetrate that secret than to revenge herself for the
impertinence of the young man's speeches.
Eugene colored. A man must be more than twenty-five years of age not
to blush at being taxed with a fidelity that women laugh at--in order,
perhaps, not to show that they envy it. However, he replied with
tolerable self-possession:--
"Why not, madame?"
Such are the blunders we all make at twenty-five.
This speech caused a violent commotion in Madame de Listomere's bosom;
but Rastignac did not yet know how to analyze a woman's face by a
rapid or sidelong glance. The lips of the marquise paled, but that was
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "It will not be long," he said, "before we shall have light.
At the lower levels we meet the same strata of phosphorescent
rock that illuminates Omean."
Never shall I forget that trip through the pits of Issus.
While it was devoid of important incidents yet it was
filled for me with a strange charm of excitement and
adventure which I think I must have hinged principally on
the unguessable antiquity of these long-forgotten corridors.
The things which the Stygian darkness hid from my objective
eye could not have been half so wonderful as the pictures
which my imagination wrought as it conjured to life again the
The Gods of Mars |
