| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: would have nor what you would want."
"I'll tell you my meaning in a word," answered Bucklaw, getting
up and walking through the room; "I want to know what the devil
is the cause of Miss Ashton's changing her mind so
suddenly?"
"And what need you care," said Craigengelt, "since the change is
in your favour?"
"I'll tell you what it is," returned his patron, "I never knew
much of that sort of fine ladies, and I believe they may be as
capricious as the devil; but there is something in Miss Ashton's
change a devilish deal too sudden and too serious for a mere
The Bride of Lammermoor |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: courageous pens to make strenuous opposition to these foreign
importations. And with that you flatter your readers. Shrewd French
mother-wit is not easily caught napping. If publishers, by ways which
you do not choose to specify, have stolen a success, the reading
public very soon judges for itself, and corrects the mistakes made by
some five hundred fools, who always rush to the fore.
"Say that the publisher who sold a first edition of the book is
audacious indeed to issue a second, and express regret that so clever
a man does not know the taste of the country better. There is the gist
of it. Just a sprinkle of the salt of wit and a dash of vinegar to
bring out the flavor, and Dauriat will be done to a turn. But mind
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