| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: "Why did the Crocodile wait to have them wrenched out?" said Sylvie.
"It had to wait," said Bruno.
I ventured on another question. "But what became of the Man who said
'You may wait here till I come back'?"
"He didn't say 'Oo may,'" Bruno explained. "He said, 'Oo will.'
Just like Sylvie says to me 'Oo will do oor lessons till twelve o'clock.'
Oh, I wiss," he added with a little sigh, "I wiss Sylvie would say 'Oo
may do oor lessons'!"
This was a dangerous subject for discussion, Sylvie seemed to think.
She returned to the Story. "But what became of the Man?"
"Well, the Lion springed at him. But it came so slow, it were three
 Sylvie and Bruno |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: intellectual instruments. Henri could do what he would in the interest
of his pleasures and vanities. This invisible action upon the social
world had invested him with a real, but secret, majesty, without
emphasis and deriving from himself. He had not the opinion which Louis
XIV. could have of himself, but that which the proudest of the
Caliphs, the Pharoahs, the Xerxes, who held themselves to be of divine
origin, had of themselves when they imitated God, and veiled
themselves from their subjects under the pretext that their looks
dealt forth death. Thus, without any remorse at being at once the
judge and the accuser, De Marsay coldly condemned to death the man or
the woman who had seriously offended him. Although often pronounced
 The Girl with the Golden Eyes |